HENRY MURRAY’S PERSONOLOGY (CONTINUED)

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Personality Psychology PSY 405

Lesson 31

HENRY MURRAY'S PERSONOLOGY (CONTINUED)

5-Tension Reduction

Murray conceived of the individual as set into action by a complex set of motives. Further, he granted that

when a need is aroused the individual is in a state of tension, and satisfaction of the need involves reduction

of the tension. Finally, the organism will learn to attend to objects and perform acts that it has found in the

past to be associated with tension reduction.

Although this conventional formulation met with Murray's approval, he contended that it is an incomplete

picture. Not only does the individual learn ways respond in such a manner as to reduce tension and thus

experience satisfaction, but also he or she learns to respond in such a manner as to develop tension so that it

can later be reduced, thereby enhancing the amount of pleasure.

One should note that this formulation applies only to effect needs. In process activity and modal needs the

satisfaction is intrinsic to the activity and may be just as Intense at the beginning or middle as at the end.

6-Thema

A thema is simply an interactive behavioral unit. Thus, it deals with the Interaction between needs and

press. With it one can represent the situations that lead to the operation of particular needs as well as the

outcome or resultants of the operation of these needs.

Themas vary from simple formulations of a single subject-object interaction to more general and of longer

transactions. They also include formulations that represent the combination of a number of simple themas

(serial themas). The thema as an analytic unit is a natural outcome of Murray's conviction that interpersonal

relations should be formulated as a dyadic unit. That is, the theorist not only must represent the subject who

is the focus of interest but also must represent fully the nature of the person with whom the subject is

interacting.

Consider two of Murray's examples of episodes. First, an individual who is snubbed by another might

respond in kind. This would be coded as rejection press, triggering rejection need in the individual. Second,

a person might make renewed efforts to succeed following failure. This would be conceptualized as

achievement need following a failure outcome or press.

7- Need Integrate

Although needs are not necessarily linked to specific objects in the environment, it often happens that with

experience the individual comes to associate particular objects with certain needs. Likewise, particular

modes of response, or means of approaching or avoiding these objects, may be acquired and associated

with the need. When this integration of the need and the image or thought of the environmental object, as

well as instrumental acts, has taken place, Murray speaks of a need integrate. A need integrate is a well

established "thematic disposition" -a need for a certain kind of interaction with a certain kind of person or

object. Under circumstances where a need integrate exists, the arousal of the need will ordinarily lead the

person to seek in an appropriate way the environmental object corresponding to the image that was a part of

the need integrate.

8- Vector-Value Scheme

Murray proposed that behavioral tendencies be represented in terms of vectors that represent broad

"physical or psychological directions of activity." The values that the vectors serve are represented by a

series of value concepts. Although the, scheme was not completely worked out, Murray provided tentative

lists of values and vectors. The vectors consist of rejection, reception, acquisition, construction,

conservation, expression, transmission, expulsion, destruction and avoidance. The values consist of body

(physical well-being), property (useful objects, wealth), authority (decision making power), affiliation

(interpersonal affection), knowledge (facts and theories, science, history), aesthetic form (beauty, art), and

ideology (system of values, philosophy, religion). In practice it is intended that these vectors and values be

arranged in a matrix of intersecting rows and columns so that each cell in the matrix will represent behavior

that corresponds to a particular vector in the service of a particular value.

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Thus, it is now possible to represent the individual at any point in time as a complex integrate of needs and

press or vectors and values, as well as personality structures, abilities, achievements, and sentiments.

9- Genetic-Maturational Determinants

In a late formulation of his views, Murray (1968b) ascribed an important role to genetic and

maturational factors in the development of personality. He conceived of genetic-maturational

processes as being responsible for programming a succession of eras throughout an individual's life.

During the first era- that of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood- new structural compositions

emerge and multiply. The middle years are marked by conservative recompositions of the already

emerged structures and functions. In the final era, the capacity for forming new compositions and

recompositions decreases and the atrophy of existing forms and functions increases. Within each

period, there are numerous smaller programs of behavioral and experiential events that run under the

guidance of genetically controlled maturational processes.

10-Learning

Learning consists of discovering what generates pleasure and what generates distress for the individual.

These hedonic and anhedonic generators may be classified in several ways. They may be retrospective

(memories of past experiences that were delightful or distressful), spective (current experiences), or

prospective (anticipations of future pleasures or pains). Current generators may be classified according to

whether they are located predominantly in the person, in the environment, or in an interpersonal

transaction. These generators may be further subdivided. For example, generators in the person may be

located in the body, in some emotional center of the brain, in some type of psychological process, or in

the judgments of conscience.

11-Uniqueness

In spite of his attention to general categories of analysis, Murray always maintained the essential

uniqueness of each person, and even of each behavioral event, as a self-evident fact. His respect for

naturalistic observation and his creative and intuitive literary talents made it easy for him to grasp and

express compellingly the individuality and elusive complexity of each subject or event.

12-Unconscious Processes

Among academic psychologists Murray was one of the first to accept the pervasive role of unconscious

determinants of behavior (Murray, 1936).

Not only is the individual unaware of certain tendencies that influence behavior but, more important, some

of these tendencies are actively defended against or warded off from consciousness. Thus, Murray not only

accepted the role of unconscious determinants of behavior but also recognized the operation of the Freudian

mechanisms of repression and resistance.

13-The Socialization Process

Murray suggested that the human personality is a compromise between the individual's own impulses and

the demands and interests of other people. These demands of other people are represented collectively by

the institutions and cultural patterns to which the individual is exposed, and the process is socialization.

Conflicts between the individual and the approved patterns of the society are customarily solved by means

of the individual conforming to the group patterns in some manner.

An essential element in achieving the goals of socialization is the development of an adequate superego. An

internal structure that serves to reward and punish one when one is behaving appropriately or

inappropriately .in terms of the culture pattern as interpreted by these authority figures. This implies that

the parents, as the most important authority figures, are the chief agents of the socialization process. The

effectiveness of the parents in rewarding approved and punishing disapproved patterns of behavior will

largely determine the success of this developmental process. An important component of the parent's role

as socializer is the effectiveness with which they develop a mutually affectionate relationship with the child

so that mere approval or disapproval can serve as significantly motivating conditions in controlling the

child's behavior.

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14- Characteristic Research and Research Methods

Let us examine very briefly several distinctive qualities of Murray's general approach to personality

research.

1-Intensive Study of Small Numbers of Normal Subjects

Murray was convinced, that an adequate understanding of behavior must follow a complete and detailed

study of individual subjects. Just as case study has provided indispensable assistance in the growth and

development of medical science, so the future of psychology is linked to the willingness of investigators to

take the time and effort to understand thoroughly individual cases. Group relations are important only when

accompanied by a careful inquiry into the deviations within the group and conditions that cause or

accompany these deviations. To report a finding that characterizes 80 percent of a specified group is of

little value unless some explanation can be provided for the failure of the other 20 percent to fit into this

pattern. Murray's consistent emphasis on this point was one of his principal contributions to research

methods.

A further distinctive quality of his research has been its emphasis upon the study of normal individuals in

natural settings. In general, the intensive study of individual cases has been reserved for the clinical

setting where the pathology of the patients has made them a subject of particular interest or else the

demands of diagnostic or therapeutic expediency have necessitated extensive information. Thus,

Murray's choice of the normal subject as the focus of his research provided a natural complement to the

case histories available from psychiatric settings.

Murray (1958) believed that the ultimate concern of the personologist is to explain and predict the

individual's activities in everyday life. For that reason, he or she should not be content to limit predictions

to the subculture of the laboratory or try to understand the individual merely by validating one test against

the other.

He was also one of the pioneers in interdisciplinary co-operation in personality research. The Harvard

Psychological Clinic staff habitually included representatives of psychiatry, psychology, anthropology, and

other disciplines in an era when this was anything but commonplace.

2-The Diagnostic Council

Murray placed great emphasis upon the importance of the observer or the psychologist as an instrument, in

psychological research. Although we may use rating scales, category sets, or psychological tests to appraise

personality, still, at the base of all these instruments is the sensitive observation of the investigator or

clinician. Because of the root status of the observer, Murray was convinced that more attention should be

paid to his serious efforts directed at improving their powers of observation. These considerations led him

to refer to the psychologist as the most important "instrument of precision" in psychological research.

One evident means of placing checks upon, and improving the quality of, observation is to have multiple

observers all examining the same data from a different perspective. Thus, using a number of investigators

to study the same individual or individuals offers unique rewards in the form of canceling out limitations

posed by the biases of particular observers or the limitations offered by specialized sets of data. Not only is

the end result of such group observation presumably superior to individual observation but the members of

the group should sharpen and improve their powers of observation as a result of the corrective function of

the observations of others.

These considerations led Murray to devise the diagnostic council, which involves many observers all

studying the same subjects from different points of View with the opportunity for a final discussion and

synthesis of the information secured from these different vantage points. After a period of individual obser-

vation during which each investigator studies the subjects through his or her own specialized techniques,

there is a conference for each subject. At this time every investigator presents his or her data and

interpretation with a full opportunity for the observations and interpretations of other observers to support

or suggest modifications in the report. A single investigator has primary responsibility for assembling and

presenting the synthesis of each case, but each member of the council is given an unlimited opportunity for

contributing to this final product.

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3-Instruments of Personality Measurement

No one has made more significant contributions to personality assessment than Murray. He devised a large

number of ingenious devices for the measurement of personality, only a small number of which have been

systematically exploited. The volumes Explorations in personality and Assessment of men provide ample

illustration of the instruments he devised or was influential in developing.

One of these, the Thematic Apperception Test, has become, next to the Rorschach Test, the most widely

used projective technique in current use (Lindzey, 1961; Murstein, 1963; Zubin, Eron, & Schumer, 1965.

see Kaplan & Saccuzzo, 1993, for a recent review). In addition, Murray's system of needs has been the

basis for several other widely used personality inventories. Most notable among these are the Edwards

Personal Preference Schedule (Edwards, 1954, 1959), the Personality Research Form (Jackson, 1967), and

the Jackson Personality Inventory (Jackson, 1976 a, b).

Almost all of Murray's instruments have been congruent with his fundamental conviction that an ultimate

understanding of human behavior will derive not from the study of lower organisms or the study of humans

under highly restricted conditions but rather from the complex study of individual behavior. That is,

Murray argued for the collection of rich and multiform data that can be expected to reflect a Wide range of

behavioral tendencies and capacities. He was convinced that one of the natural advantages of the

psychologist is the fact that he or she deals with a talking organism and that this should be capitalized upon

fully. In contrast to the biologist, the zoologist, or the physicist, the psychologist deals with a subject who

can tell a great deal about internal processes that operate, about external events that are attended to, and

about the major determinants of behavior. It is true that these reports must be assessed carefully and cannot

always be taken at their face value, but nevertheless they represent a crucial beginning in the attempt to

unravel the secrets of human behavior.

Murray pioneered in the development of personality instruments that explore the full mental content of the

subject. His instruments typicality do not limit the response alternatives of the subject by means of

predetermined categories but rather they permit and encourage a full and subjective exposition on the part

of the subject, Imagination and fantasy are permitted full participation by these techniques. They provide

the investigator with a fullness of data that is at the same time richly promising and complexly

discouraging.

4-Representative Studies

Murray and his collaborators at the Psychological Clinic conducted extensive research. Murray began

Explorations in personality with a commitment to adopting "the life history of a single man as a unit" for

investigation (1938, p. 3). One of Murray's clear legacies has been the commitment among many of his

students to study personality "the long way," by attending in depth to individual lives (e.g., White, 1963b,

1975, 1981). His research agenda has been carried forward by former students, such as Donald MacKinnon

at the Institute for Personality Assessment and Research ((PAR) at Berkeley. In addition, as noted earlier in

this chapter, Murray's research tradition is recognized in the Henry A. Murray Lectures in Personality, at

Michigan State University and in the series of volumes generated by those lectures. -

Three examples of Murray's research deserve mention. First, Explorations in personality contains over

200 pages of research reports by Murray and his collaborators. The research reported there includes

interviews about childhood and sexual development, questionnaires to measure needs and special

abilities, correlations between Murray's needs and hypnotizability, levels of aspiration, Rosenzweig's

experimental studies on repression and reaction to frustration, emotionality and galvanic skin response,

and Erikson's studies of college males in dramatic, play situations. This work deserves further study by

the interested student, both because of its inherent interest and historical significance and because it

illustrates the breadth and creativity of Murray's approach to personality.

In Murray's second major book, The assessment of men (Office of Strategic Services Assessment Staff,

1948), he described assessment procedures he and his staff had employed at the United States Office of

Strategic Services during World War II. Most of those procedures represented attempts to understand the

personalities of candidates being screened for secret, overseas assignments. This work was noteworthy

for its multidimensional, pragmatic orientation. The assessments entailed self-report tests, interviews,

observations, and situational tests. For example, applicants "leadership" skills ostensibly were measured

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by how effectively they directed several helpers in a construction task. The "helpers," however, had been

directed to obstruct the project in a variety of ways, and the entire exercise actually was designed to

measure reactions to frustration. Like the earlier experimental work at Harvard, these assessment

practices foreshadow a number of contemporary research and assessment strategies.

Finally, Murray's most interesting research project would not qualify as research for many psychologists,

but it provides a penetrating insight into Murray's conceptualization of personality.

5-Current Research

Murray's approach to personality inspired a great deal of research. In this respect, the heuristic value of his

theory has been substantial. In this section we consider research programs that are derivatives of Murray's

model.

6-McClelland and Social Motives

The research program most directly associated with Murray is David McClelland's study of the need for

achievement. The connection with Murray actually exists at three levels. First, the motive to achieve was

one of the original needs identified by Murray, who defined it as a drive to overcome obstacles and obtain

high standards. Second, McClelland believes that we are not directly aware of our basic motives. As a

consequence, he embraced Murray's proposal that we measure needs as they exist in a person's fantasies,

not in his or her behavior or self-reports. Third, following on this last point, McClelland has employed a

modified version of Murray's Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) to measure achievement motivation.

The TAT was developed (Morgan & Murray, 1935) out of Murray's belief that many of the basic human

motives exist outside of conscious awareness. This clearly presents a major measurement problem. How

can we expect a person to tell us how much of a tendency he or she possesses if the person is not aware of

the existence of that motive? This is the classic dilemma for depth psychology. Murray's solution was to

develop the TAT in accord with what has come to be known as the projective hypothesis. If we present a

person with an ambiguous picture and then ask what is in the picture, the response must be a reflection of

what is important to the person or the themes the person uses to organize the world.

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