Murray: historical context and biographical overview

¶ … Measurement of Personality by Henry Murray

The emergence of the psychoanalytic tradition in psychology by Sigmund Freud provided social scientists with profound insights and information regarding the personality and behavior of the individual. In the 20th century, psychoanalysis has been taken into the field of study of personality development, and is quantified through techniques in psychological testing. Henry Murray, one of the proponents and formulators of psychological tests as effective tools for analyzing human behavior, had introduced his own theory of personality, influenced by the works of Freud.

Personality research during Murray's time was quantified because this field of study seeks to rationalize human behavior, thinking, and action, providing more stable ground to formulate generalizations regarding the study of humans and their development. During the 1930s, continuing conflict among nations of the world prompted psychologists to study human personalities in order to gauge and predict actions through behaviors displayed by an individual. Murray (with Christina Morgan) formulated the Thematic Apperception Test or TAT, which is "an ambiguous projective test designed to elicit stories that reveal something about an individual's personality" (Santrock, 2000:435).

The formulation of the TAT is grounded on the belief that human thoughts and feelings, as well as unconscious feelings and thoughts, are projected through the story-telling method of TATs. By creating stories, or constructs, among the pictures illustrated to the individual, social scientists are able to determine the motivations and beliefs that a person subsists to, creating a general impression or profile of the individual being studied. Primarily, TATs are used to determine an individual's achievement motivation, or the need for achievement, and other factors influencing this need for achievement.

Murray posited in his theory of personality that, "there is no personality characteristic that is not possessed and manifested at least occasionally, to a slight extent, by everyone." This means that an individual is mainly influenced by his/her social realities. These social realities are constructed by giving meanings to experiences, wherein constructed meanings are developed through a system of values, beliefs, and thinking that an individual subsists to. In effect, these constructed meanings of social realities become the primary factor in the process of determining an individual's need to achieve. According to Murray, achievement motivation is influenced by either primary or secondary needs. Primary needs include basic physiological needs, such as food, clothing, water, air, sex, and avoidance of pain, while secondary needs are more abstract, or "psychological," in nature. These secondary needs are identified as follows: achievement, recognition, dominance, aggression, and autonomy or affiliation or rejection (Neill 2003).