Henry Murray Most Agree That Regardless of

Henry Murray Most agree that regardless of cultural backgrounds, human beings share common personality traits. Henry Murray went so far as to claim that there was no personality characteristic that was not possessed and did not manifest at one time or another by everyone. Although this may seem to be a broad statement on the surface, perhaps it is truer than it first appears.

Murray's Thematic Apperception Test consists of black and white pictures shown one at a time to a subject who is asked to tell a story about each one, thus revealing the subject's feelings, wishes, anxieties and other inner psychological states. Strongly influenced by Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis, Murray was responsible for introducing psychoanalytic theory into academic psychology and believed that applying his strategy to an individual's life, reduced the "complexities of behavior to identifiable and manageable structural units" (Basics pg).

The basis unit if called a proceeding, a succession of proceedings is a serial, a planned series is a serial program, and a plan for satisfying conflicting aims is a schedule" (Basics pg). The motivational concepts of need, thema, and unity-thema, are considered to be Murray's most important contributions to psychological theory (Basics pg).

A need stands for a force in the brain that organizes and directs perception, memory, thought, and action in such a way as to reduce dissatisfaction and increase satisfaction, and may be stimulated by internal states "such as hunger or external stimulation such as the sight of food" (Basics pg).

Types of needs include primary organic needs, for example, sex, and psychological needs, such as the need for achievement; overt needs, expressed in behavior, and covert needs expressed in thinking; focal needs, few goals and diffuse needs, wide range goals; proactive needs arise from within and reactive needs which are aroused by stimulation; effect needs aim at reaching a goal, while modal needs involve doing something with excellence; and social needs such as "achievement, aggression, deference, nurturance, and play" (Basics pg).

A press is an attribute which helps or hinders a person reach a goal, such as poverty or financial security (Basics pg). A thema is a unit of behavior that consists of a need and a press and a series of themas is called a serial them, while a "unity-thema is a pattern of related needs and press which is repeated in various forms" over a lifetime, and is "derived from infantile experience.