8/12/2019 Henry A Murray profile.docx

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Henry A. Murray, M.D., Ph.D.

Born in New York City, Henry A. Murray had an

impressive collection of initials after his name by 1927; heearned an A.B. (with a major in history) from Harvard in

1915, an M.D. from Columbia in 1919, an M.A. in biology

from Columbia in 1920, and a Ph.D. from Cambridge in1927. Murray (1940, pp. 152"153) reminisced about his

budding fascination with the mental life of others, including

his colleagues and medical patients at Columbia:

During my fourth year at the College of Physicians

and Surgeons, while waiting for calls to deliver

babies in Hells Kitchen, I completed a modest

study of 25 of my classmates, in which 40

anthropometric measures were later correlated with

30 traits.

. . . Later, as an interne [sic] in a hospital, I spent

more time than was considered proper for a

surgeon, inquisitively seeking psychogenic factors

in my patients. Whatever I succeeded in doing for

them"the dope fiend, the sword-swallower, theprostitute, the gangster"was more than repaid

when, after leaving the hospital, they took me

through their haunts in the underworld. This was

psychology in the rough, but at least it prepared me

to recognize the similarity between downtowndoings and uptown dreams.... But it was Jungs

book,Psychological Types,which... started me offin earnest toward psychology.

In 1925, Murray visited with Carl Jung in Zurich. Murraywrote that "we talked for hours, sailing down the lake and

smoking before the hearth of his Faustian retreat." Murray

was profoundly affected by that meeting: he said that he had

experiencedthe unconscious and it was then that he decided

to pursue depth psychology as a career.

The Harvard Psychological Clinic had been founded by

Morton Prince, and it was at Princes invitation that Murraywas hired there as an instructor. In 1937, Murray was made

the director of the clinic"one that was fast gaining a

reputation for being an exciting, stimulating, innovative placeto work. In 1938, Murray with collaborators published the

now classicExplorations in Personality,a work that

described, among other techniques, the Thematic

Apperception Test.

In 1943, Murray left Harvard for a position in the Army

Medical Corps to help with the war effort. He established and

directed the Office of Strategic Services, an agency charged in

part with selecting men for James Bond"like tasks during the

war (see OSS,Assessment of Men,1948). In 1947, Murrayreturned to Harvard, where he lectured part-time and helpedestablish the Psychological Clinic Annex in 1949. In 1962,

Murray became emeritus professor at Harvard. He earned the

Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the

American Psychological Association and the Gold Medal

Award for lifetime achievement from the American

Psychological Foundation. Murray died of pneumonia onJune 23, 1988, at the age of 95.

References

Murray, H. A. (1940). What should psychologists do about

psychoanalysis?Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,

35,150175.

OSS Assessment Staff. (1948).Assessment of men: Selection

of personnel for the Office of Strategic Service.New York:

Rinehart.

http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/psychtesting/profiles/murray.htm

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