Guide Notes on Henry Murray: Theory of Personology

Essential Points About Henry Murray

Personality is located in the brain “No brain, No personality.”

From a Psychoanalytic Perspective Murray used the term personology to describe his study of human lives and individual differences in personality. He described a habit system as automatic, unconscious behaviors shaped by the id, ego, and superego. Murray emphasized positive instincts related to motivation and needs.

His theory of personality is based upon needs and motives that suggest our personalities are a reflection of behaviors controlled by needs. While some needs are temporary and changing, other needs are more deeply seated in our nature. According to Murray, these psychogenic needs function mostly on the unconscious level, but play a major role in our personality.

1) Murray was influenced by Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory although made his own distinction of  id and superego.

2) Importance of genetic and maturational factors in the stages of development of personality: a) childhood-adolescence-young adulthood, b) middle years, and c) senescence (final era).

3) Complex - effects of infantile experiences upon later behavior are clear and extensive. The five complexes are: a) claustral complexes, b) oral complex,  c) anal complex, d) urethral complex, e) genital or castration complex.

4) Need is a construct (a convenient or hypothetical concept) which stands free for a force. In the brain region, a force which organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation and action in such a way as to transform in a certain direction existing, unsatisfying situation.

5) 5 different types of needs: a) Primary (viscerogenic needs) and Secondary Need (psychogenic needs),   b) Overt (motor) and Covert (fantasy/dreams) Needs, c) Focal and Diffuse Needs - anything related to the environmental objects - if it is unsuitable (fixation) - considered pathological, d) Proactive and Reactive Needs - from within - kinetic/response to environmental event e) Modal needs and effect needs - doing something with a certain degree of quality and excellence/lead to a desired state or end.

6) Press - environmental force that interacts with needs to determine behavior. Two kinds of press - alpha (objective) press and beta (perceived) press.

7) Thema - molar and interactive behavior unit - involves press and the need that is operating.

8) Strengths

• promoted interest in psychoanalytic theory among academic psychologist
• emphasized on the importance of the past and present context within which behavior takes place
• intensive study of small numbers of normal people

9) Weaknesses

• critics think his theory is borad
• his skill at taxonomy creating fine distinctions and detailed classifications made his studies unecessarily complex
• his writing and research not trendy at this current time

10) Trivia:

a) Had an affair (since he refused to leave wife Josephine Rantaul) with Christiana Morgan - co-author of TAT.

b) In 1943 Murray helped complete Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler (predicted Hitler would

choose suicide if Germany is defeated and that Hitler had participated in a homosexual relationship).

c)Then 16-year-old Ted Kaczynski, participated in Murray's ethically questionable, CIA-sponsored MK ULTRA experiments in which twenty-two undergraduates were used as guinea pigs. Kaczynski who went on to become the Unabomber, a serial killer targeting academics and technologists.

d) Murray was a leading authority on the works of American author Herman Melville (Moby Dick) and

amassed  a collection of books, manuscripts and artifacts relating to Melville. At his death he was

preparing a book tentatively titled ''A Melville Mosaic: Morsels from the Unpublished Biography.''

Henry murray from Lo-Ann Placido

Sources, References and Related Links:

Personality, D. Limpingco and G. Tria, 3e

http://www.slideshare.net/loannplacido/henry-murray

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/obituaries/henry-a-murray-is-dead-at-95-developer-of-personality-theory.html

http://www.psych.westminster.edu/psy311/murray_files/frame.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Murray

http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/psychogenic.htm

http://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/murray.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray's_system_of_needs

http://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/murray.html

Textbook on Personality by Limpingco and Tria

Dr. Delia Limpingco and Dr. Geraldine Tria are co-authors of the textbook Personality  published in 2007. The book covers six Theoretical Paradigm like, Psychoanalytic, Social Psychological, Personology, Trait, Existential Humanistic and Learning Paradigm. Each proponent of the  paradigm of a paradigm is given a short biography their views or theory of personality they espouse and it provides a evaluation as to the strengths and weaknesses of the theory. The textbook is very handy and useful to easily get acquainted or for others who have taken the course to be re-acquainted of those psychologists. Interesting to note also to find website links in the book. So pay a visit and read from those links that the authors have cited.


Related link: 
http://psychometricpinas.blogspot.com/2013/07/theories-of-personality-reference.html   

Theories of Personality

The source for this excerpt below is wikipedia.

Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and its individual differences. Its areas of focus include:

• Construction of a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes

• Investigation of individual differences

• Investigation of human nature and human's similarities

"Personality" is a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations. The word "personality" originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. In the theatre of the ancient Latin-speaking world, the mask was not used as a plot device to disguise the identity of a character, but instead was a convention employed to represent or typify that character.
Personality also refers to the pattern of thoughts, feelings, social adjustments, and behaviors consistently exhibited over time that strongly influences one's expectations, self-perceptions, values, and attitudes. It also predicts human reactions to other people, problems, and stress.^[1][2] There is still no universal consensus on the definition of "personality" in psychology. Gordon Allport (1937) described two major ways to study personality: the nomothetic and the idiographic. Nomothetic psychology seeks general laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the principle of self-actualization or the trait of extraversion. Idiographic psychology is an attempt to understand the unique aspects of a particular individual.
The study of personality has a broad and varied history in psychology with an abundance of theoretical traditions. The major theories include dispositional (trait) perspective, psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, behaviorist, evolutionary and social learning perspective. However, many researchers and psychologists do not explicitly identify themselves with a certain perspective and instead take an eclectic approach. Research in this area is empirically driven, such as dimensional models, based on multivariate statistics, such as factor analysis, or emphasizes theory development, such as that of the psychodynamic theory. There is also a substantial emphasis on the applied field of personality testing. In psychological education and training, the study of the nature of personality and its psychological development is usually reviewed as a prerequisite to courses in abnormal psychology or clinical psychology.

 Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_psychology

Other Important Links:

1) http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologystudyguides/a/personalitysg_3.htm

2) http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/perscontents.html

3) http://intropsych.mcmaster.ca/psych2b3/lectures/lectures_home.html


Video

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SrPoIsI42U

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUK-AMOaTYo

3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lst6DxyuIAA

4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-HSiZUxTIk


Slides

1) http://www.slideshare.net/jenne531/theories-of-personality

2) http://www.slideshare.net/MissBowePE/personality-8140081