____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Subject PSYCHOLOGY Paper No and Title Paper No. 5: Personality Theories Module No and Title Module No. 5: Murray’s Theory of Needs Module Tag PSY_P5_M5 Table of Contents 1. Learning Outcomes 2. Introduction 3. A look into Murray’s life 4. Murray’s Personology 4.1 Principles of Personology (Study of personality) 4.2 The Divisions of Personality 4.3 Personality Development in Childhood 5. Murray’s Theory of Needs 5.1 Motivators of Behaviour: Needs 5.2 Needs: Types 5.3 Needs: Characteristics 6. Assessment in Framework of Murray 6.1 OSS Assessment Program 6.2 Thematic Apperception Test 7. Reflections on Murray and his Personology 8. Summary PSYCHOLOGY Paper No. 5: Personality Theories Module No. 5: Murray’s Theory of Needs ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Learning Outcomes After studying this module, you shall be able to Reflect on Murray’s life history. Identify the cornerstones of Murray’s Personology Review the idea of needs as motivators of behaviour. Know about assessment in theory by Murray. Evaluate the theory of needs by Murray. 2. Introduction Henry Murray’s approach to personality comprises of impact of unconscious and conscious forces, past, present and future and the influence of sociological as well as physiological factors. Murray’s appreciation of the effect on adult behaviour of experiences in childhood and ideas of id, superego and ego display the Freudian influence but at the same time, Murray gave exclusive elucidations of the concepts. His extensive divergence from mainstream psychoanalysis allows his approach to fall in line with the neo-Freudians instead of the lobby of loyal Freudian. Murray coined the label of “personology” to cater to his belief that personality psychology must focus on the entire life course of an individual. Murray’s system has 2 distinguishing characteristics that are refined slant to the idea of human needs and sources of data on which serves as the basis of the theory. The list of needs proposed by him is extensively used in clinical practice and research in personality. His data came from “normal” individuals (Harvard University’s male undergraduate students) and not from psychotherapy patients. A little data was also derived from empirical lab procedures and not case histories. By his personal charisma and his long standing association with a key university, Murray congregated and trained a number of psychologists who went on to achieve eminence and carried on his teachings. 3. A look into Murray’s Life Henry Murray was born 13 May 1893 in New York City. In his autobiography, Murray discussed his childhood with elements of maternal rejection, an exceptional sensitivity to others’ sufferings and Adlerian compensation for a physical defect but yet as “the average, privileged American boy.” Murray’s first reminiscences were of his advantaged background (Triplet, 1993) and he referred to “the marrow-of-my-being memory” as intriguing. At around age of 4, he looked at an image of a sad lady and sad son sitting together – similar to the gloomy picture utilized in Thematic Apperception Test. He recalled his mother saying “It is the prospect of death that has made them sad” (Murray, 1967). He construed this memory as indicative of the emotional ties to his mother dying prematurely as she hastily weaned him at 2 months of age and fussed over his siblings instead. He contended that his mother’s behaviour gave shape to his depressive personality. For Murray, his depression was the spring of “misery and melancholy” which he struggled to masquerade in daily behaviour through displaying an enthusiastic, jovial, and sociable manner (Murray, 1967). Such a detachment with his mother in childhood led him to doubt Freud’s Oedipus complex as it had no parallel in his own experience. Murray’s relationship with his two emotionally disturbed aunts made him sensitive to emotional problems and sufferings. Physical incompetence and speech impediment of stuttering drove Murray to recompense for his limits in theatre and sports and he later conceded “an Adlerian factor was at work” (Murray, 1967). PSYCHOLOGY Paper No. 5: Personality Theories Module No. 5: Murray’s Theory of Needs ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ After attending preparatory school – Groton, he registered at Harvard University. He took history but got average grades as he favoured “the three Rs—Rowing, Rum and Romanticism”. His career through a tricky road reached personality studies. He loathed his college psychology course, dropping out after the second lecture. When he taught a psychology course himself is when he did attend to the subject. In 1919, Murray graduated at the top of his class from Columbia University Medical School. He taught physiology at Harvard after completing his M.A. Biology from Columbia. He did a 2-year surgery internship at a hospital in New York and following which he spent 2 years at the Rockefeller Institute conducting biomedical research in embryology. In 1927, Murray received his doctorate in biochemistry from Cambridge University. Murray’s empathy and sensitivity for others became durable during his internship as he became fascinated by the psychological aspects in his patients’ lives. He read Carl Jung’s Psychological Types in fascination in 1923. Murray faced a serious personal problem after few weeks of finishing the book. He fell in love with an attractive, depressive, rich married woman - Christiana Morgan who was equally amazed with Jung’s work. He did not wish to leave his wife of seven years but neither did he wish to renounce his lover as her lively, creative nature was contrary to his wife making both indispensable to Murray. He lived in conflict for two years then on Morgan’s suggestion, he went to meet Carl Jung in Zurich. Jung resolved his trouble by instruction and illustration. Jung, who was having an open affair with a younger woman and yet lived with his wife, counselled Murray with the same and this carried on for the subsequent forty years. Jung not only solved his career and personal dilemmas; he made Murray conscious of the span of the unconscious. Murray noted, “The great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open. I had experienced the unconscious” (1940). His outlook toward the man who guided him during his predicament varied severely over the years. His early approval of Jung’s analysis became scornful rejection. He held that Jung “believe anything I told him that was along the lines that he liked, but he would overlook what did not fit his theories” (Anderson, 1988). In 1927, psychologist Morton Prince offered Murray an appointment at the Harvard Psychological Clinic for studying personality. For his preparation, Murray undertook classical Freudian psychoanalysis and felt that the analyst was bored by his placid complex-lacking childhood. Morgan & Murray (1935) developed Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), a projective measure of personality. The TAT was a best-seller for Harvard University Press. Regardless of the magnitude of Morgan’s involvement, the publication had only Murray as author. At 94, long after death off Morgan, he endorsed that she was “part of every paper he wrote and every lecture he gave, and that her very presence at the clinic raised the caliber of his thinking” (Douglas, 1993). In 1938, Explorations in Personality: A Clinical and Experimental Study of Fifty Men of College Age was published, assuring his instant triumph as a personality theorist. Murray joined the U.S. Army as assessment director for Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to screen candidates for dangerous assignments during World War II. In 1951, owing to his interest in literature, he published an examination of the psychological connotations of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. He conducted research, refined his theory and trained generations of psychologists at Harvard until he retired in 1962. He was recipient of Gold Medal Award by American Psychological Foundation and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award by American Psychological Association. In 1988, Murray died at the age of 95 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He viewed the total of his profession as a “series of failures and unfulfilled promises [and] could not escape the feeling that he had not quite made the grade” Henry A. Murray Research Centre for the Study of Lives was established by Radcliffe College in his memory. PSYCHOLOGY Paper No. 5: Personality Theories Module No. 5: Murray’s Theory of Needs ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Murray’s Personology 4.1 Principles of Personology (Study of personality) 1. Personality is ingrained in the brain i.e. cerebral physiology of an individual directs and manages every facet of the personality. Personality depends on feeling states, beliefs, attitudes, fears, unconscious & conscious memories and values. For instance; certain drugs can alter the brain operation, therefore personality. 2. Tension reduction i.e. the process of reducing tension is the act that is satisfying, rather than getting a condition free of tension. Murray held that a tension-free being in itself a cause of anguish as we require stimulation and hustle and bustle to increase tension and then the satisfaction of reducing it. Ideal human state must always involve having a definite intensity of tension to reduce. 3.