Henry Murray

Murray, Walter (fl. mid‐18th century), actor and manager. With his partner Thomas Kean, he led a band of traveling players around the eastern seaboard in the early 1750s. At one time their aggregation was known as the Virginia Company of Comedians. Their repertory consisted entirely of the English plays then most popular in London.

1893-1988

American psychologist and psychoanalyst Henry A. Murray was born in New York City on May 13, 1893, and died in Boston on June 23, 1988. He was one of the most important pioneers who introduced psychoanalysis into American academic psychology.

Originally trained as a physician, he was analyzed by both Carl G. Jung and Franz Alexander, and became one of the founding members of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. Not only was Murray a leader in the field of personality theory, but Murray (with the help of Christiana Morgan) created the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). He also took a leading role in making psychological profiles for the American government's Office of Strategic Services during World War II. For years Murray headed the Harvard Psychological Clinic, originally founded by Morton Prince, and he also worked on the writings of Herman Melville for almost half of his long life. Although Murray took a wholly independent path apart from both Freudian and Jungian organizations, his contact with both men has to be considered historically memorable.

Although Murray was self-taught as a psychologist, he felt proud to be in the humanistic tradition of a philosopher like William James. He remains notable for having inspired generations of graduate students. His TAT test was a means of drawing forth from people by means of words and stories important aspects of personality that an individual could or would not volunteer. The TAT test was designed to be both a diagnostic tool and a research tool. His most famous single book, which was the outcome of collaborating with others at his Psychological Clinic, was Explorations in Personality (1938). He also co-edited, with the Harvard anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, an influential book of readings, Personality in Nature, Culture, and Society (1948).

Murray, along with Kluckhohn and the sociological theorist Talcott Parsons, helped create the famous, but short-lived, interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations at Harvard. And he was illustrious enough to have been asked to testify as an expert witness in behalf of Alger Hiss in the second trial that ended in Hiss's being convicted of perjury. (Murray's social standing was so secure, one of his forbearers having been the last Tory governor of Virginia, that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI conducted only the most cursory report on him.) Dean Acheson, secretary of state under President Harry Truman, was a classmate of Murray's at Groton, and reported in 1970 that Murray had been the "outstanding" member of their class "in the sense of originality of mind, curiosity about everything, sympathetic personality, catholicity of taste, cultural breadth." Murray felt blocked as a writer, not just in connection with his Melville project but in explaining his whole orientation toward human nature. Yet he remains memorable not just for his emphasis on turning from the abnormal to the normal, and from failure to success, but because he fought against dogmatism in psychoanalysis as unscientific, and insisted on distrusting any truth that became a sect.

Bibliography

Anderson, James W. (1988). Henry A. Murray's early career: A psychobiographical exploration. Journal of Personality, 6 (1), 139-71.

Kluckhohn, Clyde and Murray, Henry A. (eds.). (1948). Personality in nature, society and culture. New York: Knopf.

Murray, Henry A. (1938). Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Roazen, Paul. (2003). Interviews on Freud and Jung with Henry A. Murray in 1965. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 48 (1), 1-27.

Robinson, Forrest. (1992). Love's story told: A life of Henry A. Murray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

—PAUL ROAZEN

Mina (short for Wilhelmina) Murray, one of the leading characters in Bram Stoker's Dracula made her first appearance in the book through correspondence between herself and her long-time friend Lucy Westenra As with Lucy, Stoker said very little about Mina's physical appearance, but she was obviously an attractive young woman in her twenties. She was engaged to Jonathan Harker who at the beginning of the novel had traveled to Transylvania to arrange for the sale of some property to Count Dracula. While she was awaiting his return, she joined Lucy in Whitby for a vacation together. The visit went well until Lucy began to sleepwalk. One night in the middle of the night, Mina found Lucy sleepwalking on the East Cliff and thought she saw someone with her. Taking Lucy home, she noticed that her friend had two small prick marks on her neck. Mina then had to worry about Lucy and about Jonathan, who was overdue from his visit to Transylvania and from whom no letter had arrived.

Finally, a letter concerning Harker arrived. He was in the Hospital of St. Joseph and St. Mary in Budapest recovering from his experiences in Castle Dracula Mina dropped everything and went to Budapest, where she married Jonathan without further delay. She and Jonathan returned to England, where they learned of Lucy's death.

Abraham Van Helsing who had been brought into Lucy's case as a consultant while Mina was in Hungary , immediately engaged Mina in his search for information concerning the vampire that caused Lucy's death. Mina was interested in how Lucy's death and Jonathan's condition were related. She volunteered to transcribe Dr. John Seward's diary concerning the events leading to Lucy's death. She was present when Van Helsing organized the men to destroy Dracula. To Jonathan's relief, having completed the transcription work, Mina initially agreed to "hold back" and let the men do the work of actually killing Dracula.

However, Mina began to have the same symptoms as Lucy before her death. She grew pale and complained of fatigue. During her major encounter with Dracula, mist floated through the cracks in the door and filled her room. The mist formed a whirling cloud. Mina saw the two red eyes and white face she had seen while with Lucy. Meanwhile, as Mina's fatigue increased, the men went about the work of discovering the locations of Dracula's resting places.

The men finally realized that Dracula was attacking Mina and hurried to her room. Dracula had entered some moments earlier and, while Jonathan slept, told Mina that she was to become "flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and my helper." He then opened a wound in his chest with his sharp fingernails and forced Mina to drink the blood. He pushed her aside and turned his attention to the men as they rushed into the room; they held him at bay with a eucharistic wafer and a crucifix Dracula turned into mist and escaped. Mina had the marks of his teeth on her neck, and her own teeth had become more prominent, a sign that she was in the process of becoming a vampire. Van Helsing, wishing to protect her, touched her forehead with the wafer. Unexpectedly, it burned its impression into her forehead as if a branding iron.

Left behind while the men destroyed Dracula's resting places in London, Mina suggested that Van Helsing hypnotize her. In her hypnotic state, she revealed that Dracula had left England on a ship. Mina traveled with the men as they chased him to Castle Dracula for a final confrontation.

When the last encounter with Dracula began, Mina was en route to the castle with Van Helsing. When they arrived, Van Helsing drew a protective circle around Mina at the edge of which he placed pieces of the eucharistic host. Among the entities who tried, unsuccessfully, to invade the circle were the three vampire brides who lived in the castle. During the daylight hours, Mina remained in the circle while Van Helsing went into the castle to kill the three vampires, sanitize Dracula's tomb, and make the castle inhospitable to any "undead."

The next day Mina and Van Helsing made their way some distance from (but still in view of) the castle to a spot safe from wolves, and again Van Helsing drew a circle. From their protected cover, they saw Dracula approach in his box with a band of Gypsies Close behind were the men in hot pursuit. In front of the castle Dracula was finally killed. The spot on Mina's forehead disappeared, and she and Jonathan returned to England.

Mina on Film and Stage: As the primary female character in Dracula, Mina generally had a prominent part in both stage and screen versions of the book. Only in the American version of the play by John Balderston did Mina disappear and have her character combined with Lucy. In the Frank Langella movie version, Dracula (1979) , her role was reversed with that of Lucy. Winona Ryder played Mina in Bram Stoker's Dracula the movie that most closely approximated Stoker's original story. Ryder's portrayal deviated from the book most clearly in the movie's subplot about her romantic interest in the youthful appearing Dracula.

Henry Murray
Henry Murray
Born	May 13, 1893(1893-05-13) New York
Died	June 23, 1988 (aged 95)
Nationality	American
Fields	psychology
Institutions	Harvard University
Known for	Personality psychology

Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist who taught for over 30 years at Harvard University. He was founder of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and developed a theory of personality based on "need" and "press". He also is developer of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) which is widely used by psychologists.

Contents 1 Personal background 2 Professional career 3 Works 4 References

Personal background

Henry Murray was born into a wealthy family in New York in 1893. He had an older sister and a younger brother. Carver and Scheier, in "Perspectives on Personality" p100, note that "he got on well with his father but had a poor relationship with his mother" resulting in a deep-seated feeling of depression. They hypothesize that the disruption of this relationship led Murray to be especially aware of people's needs and their importance as underlying determinants of behavior. At Harvard, he majored in history with a poor performance, but compensated with football, rowing and boxing. At Columbia College he did much better in medicine and completed M.D. and also received an M.A. in biology 1919. For the next two years he was an instructor in physiology at Harvard and 1927 he received his doctorate degree in biochemistry at Cambridge.

A turning point in Murray's life occurred at the age of 30, when he had been married for seven years. He met and fell in love with Christiana Morgan but experienced serious conflict as he did not want to leave his wife. This raised his awareness of conflicting needs, the pressure that can result, and the links to motivation. Carver and Scheier note that it was Morgan who was "fascinated by the psychology of Carl Jung" and it was a result of her urging that he met Carl Jung in Switzerland. He described Jung as "The first full blooded, spherical - and Goethian, I would say, intelligence I had ever met." He was analyzed by him and studied his works. "The experience of bringing a problem to a psychologist and receiving an answer that seemed to work had a great impact on Murray, leading him to seriously consider psychology as a career" (J. W. Anderson). Jung's advice to Murray concerning his personal life was to continue openly with both relationships.

Professional career

In 1927, at the age of 33, he became assistant director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. Murray developed the concepts of latent needs (not openly displayed), manifest needs (observed in people's actions), "press" (external influences on motivation) and "thema" - "a pattern of press and need that coalesces around particular interactions". Murray used the term "apperception" to refer to the process of projecting fantasy imagery onto an objective stimulus. The concept of apperception and the assumption that everyone's thinking is shaped by subjective processes provides the rationale behind the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). This was developed by Murray and Morgan (1935). In 1937 Murray became director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. In 1938 he published Explorations in Personality, now a classic in psychology, which includes a description of the Thematic Apperception Test. During his period at Harvard, Murray sat in on lectures by Alfred North Whitehead whose process philosophy marked his philosophical and metaphysical thinking throughout his professional career (Laughlin 1973).

During World War II, he left Harvard and worked as lieutenant colonel for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). James Miller, in charge of the selection of secret agents at the OSS during World War Two, reports that Murray was the originator of the term "situation test". This type of assessment, based on practical tasks / activities was pioneered by the British Military. Murray acted as a consultant for the British Government (1938) in the setting up of the Officer Selection Board. Murray's previous work at The Harvard Psychological Clinic enabled him to apply his theories in the design of the selection processes used by WOSB and OSS to assess potential agents. The assessments were based on analysis of specific criteria (e.g. "leadership") by a number of raters across a range of activities. Results were pooled to achieve an overall assessment. The underlying principles were later adopted by AT&T in the development of Assessment Center methodology, now widely used to assess management potential in both private and public sector organisations.

Murray's identification of core psychological needs (Murray's Psychogenic Needs, Murray's system of needs), including Achievement, Affiliation and Power (1938) provided the theoretical basis for the later research of David McClelland and underpins development of competency-based models of management effectiveness (Richard Boyatzis), Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and ideas relating to Positive psychology.^{[citation needed]} However, Murray's contribution is rarely acknowledged in contemporary academic literature.^{[citation needed]} McClelland, Boyatzis and Spencer went on to found the McBer Consultancy.

Commissioned by OSS boss, William "Wild Bill" Donovan, in 1943 Professor Murray helped complete Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler. The report was done in collaboration with psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer, Dr. Ernst Kris, New School for Social Research, and Dr. Bertram D. Lawin, New York Psychoanalytic Institute. The report used many sources to profile Hitler including a number of informants such as Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hermann Rauschning, Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Gregor Strasser, Friedelinde Wagner, and Kurt Ludecke. The groundbreaking study was the pioneer of Offender profiling and political psychology, today commonly used by many countries as part of assessing international relations.

In addition to predicting that if defeat for Germany was near, Adolf Hitler would choose suicide, Professor Murray's collaborative report stated that Hitler was impotent as far as heterosexual relations were concerned and that there was a possibility that Hitler had participated in a homosexual relationship. The 1943 report stated that: "The belief that Hitler is homosexual has probably developed (a) from the fact that he does show so many feminine characteristics, and (b) from the fact that there were so many homosexuals in the Party during the early days and many continue to occupy important positions. It is probably true that Hitler calls Albert Forster "Bubi", which is a common nickname employed by homosexuals in addressing their partners."

Having returned to Harvard 1947, Murray lectured and established with others the Psychological Clinic Annex and was a chief researcher at Harvard. Alston Chase's book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist tells of the MK ULTRA experiments in which Theodore Kaczynski is reported to have undergone at Harvard, under the direction of Henry Murray. Chase connects these experiences in a thesis to Kaczynski's later career as the Unabomber.

When Murray became emeritus professor at Harvard, he earned the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and Gold Medal Award for lifetime achievement from the American Psychological Foundation.

Murray died from pneumonia at the age of 95.

Works

• Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in Personality. New York: Oxford University Press
• Murray, H. A. (1940). What should psychologists do about psychoanalysis? Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 35, 150–175.
• OSS Assessment Staff. (1948). Assessment of Men: Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Service. New York: Rinehart.

References

• Test Developer Profiles: Henry A. Murray, M.D., Ph.D.
• TAT Research
• Sandra K. Webster: Henry Murray
• Ted K., the CIA & LSD: Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
• Cornell University Law Library [1] - "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler " Readers can download a PDF version of the whole document HERE
• Anderson, J. W. (1988). Henry Murray's early career. A psychobiographical exploration. Journal of Personality, 56, 138-171.
• Carver and Scheier (1992) Perspectives on Personality (2nd edition), Allyn & Bacon.
• Chase, Alston (2003) Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0-393-02002-9.
• Robinson, Forrest (1992) Love's story told: A life of Henry A. Murray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Shneidman, E. S. ed., (1981) Selections from the Personology of Henry A. Murray New York: Harper-Collins Publishers.
• Roazen, Paul (2003), "Interviews on Freud and Jung with Henry A. Murray in 1965.", The Journal of analytical psychology 48 (1): 1–2, 2003 Feb, PMID 12664714 
• Meehl, P E (1992), "Needs (Murray, 1938) and state-variables (Skinner, 1938).", Psychological reports 70 (2): 407–50, 1992 Apr, doi:10.2466/PR0.70.2.407-450, PMID 1598366 
• Triplet, R G (1992), "Henry A. Murray. The making of a psychologist?", The American psychologist 47 (2): 299–307, 1992 Feb, doi:10.1037/0003-066X.47.2.299, PMID 1567091 
• Laughlin, C D (1973), "Discussion: The influence of Whitehead's organism upon Murray's personology.", Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 9: 251–7, doi:10.1002/1520-6696(197307)9:3<251::AID-JHBS2300090308>3.0.CO;2-4, PMID 11609728 
• Smith, M B (1971), "Allport, Murray, and Lewin on personality theory: Notes on a confrontation.", Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 7: 353–62, 1971 Oct, PMID 11609526 
• BELLAK, L (1958), "Henry A. Murray: an appreciation.", Journal of projective techniques 22 (2): 143, 1958 Jun, PMID 13550260 

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