1
HENRY MURRAY
Life highlights
- Experienced maternal rejections which is different from Freud’s concept of Oedipal
complex
- Saw Adler’s concept as more relatable and used it to form his concepts
- Medicine and sensitivity to patients’ psychology’
- Carl Jung’s influence
- Harvard Psychological Clinic: focused on studying personality
o Thematic Apperception Test
- World War II: Director of Assessment for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
- In his death, he was said to feel like his life was a series of failures and unfulfilled promises
[and] could not escape the feeling that he had not quite made the grade
PERSONOLOGY
Principles:
1. Personality is rooted in the brain
• The individual’s cerebral physiology guides the personality
2. People act to reduce physiological and psychological tensions
• Not a tension-free state but having a satisfying feeling
• Having a tension-free existence is itself a source of distress
3. An individual’s personality continues to develop over time and is constructed of all the
events that occur during a person’s life
• The study of a person’s life is of great importance
4. Personality changes and progresses; it is not fixed or static
• Personality Is unique
5. Every individual is unique, but he/she has similarities among all people
• An individual human being is like no other person, like some other people, and like
every other person
Divisions of Personality (like Freud’s – has an id, ego and superego)
1. Id
- Repository of all innate impulsive tendencies and concern with behavior
- It provides the energy and the direction of behavior
- Also contains desirable impulses such as love and empathy
• Difference with Freud
• Freud – primitive impulses are in the id
- Strength or intensity varies from person to person
• Problem of controlling and directing the id is not the same for all people
2. Superego
, 2
- Internalization of the culture’s values and norms by which we come to evaluate and judge
our behavior and that of others
- Prevents occurrence of socially unacceptable impulses and expresses acceptable needs
appropriately
- Not rigidly crystallized but continues to develop throughout life
• There is greater complexity and sophistication in our superego as we grow older
- Not in constant conflict with the id (complements the id)
• They need each other to create balance
- Ego-ideal
• Includes one’s goals and ambition
• Compared to Freud, this is much more optimistic
3. Ego
- The rational governor of personality, and conscious organizer of all behaviors
- More active in determining behavior compared to Freud’s concept
- Id-Superego arbiter
• The ego is not the slave of the id and superego and reality, but it organizes the
behavior coming from the id impulse
• Extreme favoring of the:
o Id: when favored → life of crime
o Superego: when favored → life of inflexibility
• Managing conflict between the id and superego
o Strong ego: mediate effectively
o Weak ego: personality becomes a battleground
• Conflict is evitable
o Harmony: integrated the id and superego
- For Murray, when a person is rigid of his morals, it means that the ego extremely favors
the superego
Needs Theory
- Henry Murray’s most popular theory
- Needs are the motivators of behavior
- Came from the result of studying normal male Harvard University students
Needs
- A physicochemical force in the brain that organizes and directs intellectual and perceptual
abilities
- May arise either from internal processes such as hunger or thirst, or from events in the
environment
- Arouse a level of tension that the organism tries to reduce by acting to satisfy them
• Tension-reduction is important
- It energizes and directs our behaviors – that is, they activate behavior in direction to satisfy
the needs
HENRY MURRAY
Life highlights
- Experienced maternal rejections which is different from Freud’s concept of Oedipal
complex
- Saw Adler’s concept as more relatable and used it to form his concepts
- Medicine and sensitivity to patients’ psychology’
- Carl Jung’s influence
- Harvard Psychological Clinic: focused on studying personality
o Thematic Apperception Test
- World War II: Director of Assessment for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
- In his death, he was said to feel like his life was a series of failures and unfulfilled promises
[and] could not escape the feeling that he had not quite made the grade
PERSONOLOGY
Principles:
1. Personality is rooted in the brain
• The individual’s cerebral physiology guides the personality
2. People act to reduce physiological and psychological tensions
• Not a tension-free state but having a satisfying feeling
• Having a tension-free existence is itself a source of distress
3. An individual’s personality continues to develop over time and is constructed of all the
events that occur during a person’s life
• The study of a person’s life is of great importance
4. Personality changes and progresses; it is not fixed or static
• Personality Is unique
5. Every individual is unique, but he/she has similarities among all people
• An individual human being is like no other person, like some other people, and like
every other person
Divisions of Personality (like Freud’s – has an id, ego and superego)
1. Id
- Repository of all innate impulsive tendencies and concern with behavior
- It provides the energy and the direction of behavior
- Also contains desirable impulses such as love and empathy
• Difference with Freud
• Freud – primitive impulses are in the id
- Strength or intensity varies from person to person
• Problem of controlling and directing the id is not the same for all people
2. Superego
, 2
- Internalization of the culture’s values and norms by which we come to evaluate and judge
our behavior and that of others
- Prevents occurrence of socially unacceptable impulses and expresses acceptable needs
appropriately
- Not rigidly crystallized but continues to develop throughout life
• There is greater complexity and sophistication in our superego as we grow older
- Not in constant conflict with the id (complements the id)
• They need each other to create balance
- Ego-ideal
• Includes one’s goals and ambition
• Compared to Freud, this is much more optimistic
3. Ego
- The rational governor of personality, and conscious organizer of all behaviors
- More active in determining behavior compared to Freud’s concept
- Id-Superego arbiter
• The ego is not the slave of the id and superego and reality, but it organizes the
behavior coming from the id impulse
• Extreme favoring of the:
o Id: when favored → life of crime
o Superego: when favored → life of inflexibility
• Managing conflict between the id and superego
o Strong ego: mediate effectively
o Weak ego: personality becomes a battleground
• Conflict is evitable
o Harmony: integrated the id and superego
- For Murray, when a person is rigid of his morals, it means that the ego extremely favors
the superego
Needs Theory
- Henry Murray’s most popular theory
- Needs are the motivators of behavior
- Came from the result of studying normal male Harvard University students
Needs
- A physicochemical force in the brain that organizes and directs intellectual and perceptual
abilities
- May arise either from internal processes such as hunger or thirst, or from events in the
environment
- Arouse a level of tension that the organism tries to reduce by acting to satisfy them
• Tension-reduction is important
- It energizes and directs our behaviors – that is, they activate behavior in direction to satisfy
the needs
