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CONTENTS

Biographical Background 3

Personality 4

Proceedings 5

Serials 5

Serial Programs, Schedules, Ordination 6

Abilities And Achievements 6

Establishment Of Personality 7

Dynamics Of The Personality 8

Types Of Needs 8

Interrelation/Hierarchy Of Needs 10

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Press 11

Tension Reduction 11

Thema 12

Need Integrate And Unity Thema 12

Regnant Process 13

Vector-Values Scheme 13

20 Needs 14

Infantile Complexes 15

Genetic-Maturational Determinants 19

Learning 20

Other Important Points 21

A Last Look 22

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 BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND
- Murray was born in New York on

May 23, 1893.

- He was cross-eyed and underwent

surgery at home, but the surgery

rendered him without stereoscopic

vision.

- Despite of this handicap, he became

a successful boxer, winning the local

featherweight championship.

- Murray studied at Groton School and

Harvard College, finishing AB Major

in History in 1915.

- Murray was awarded the Scientific Contribution Award by the American

Psychological Association and the Gold Medal Award by the American

Psychological Foundation.

- He Married Josephine Rantaul in 1916.

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- He fell in love with Christiana Morgan, and sought counselling from Carl Jung

who advised him to maintain an open relationship with the later while within then

marriage.

- Murray and Morgan collaborated to construct the Thematic Apperception Test.

- Josephine died in 1962, and then Christiana died in 1967.

- Two years later, at the age of 67, Murray remarried

- He died of pneumonia on June 23, 1988 at the age of 95.

PERSONALITY
- Personality was viewed by Murray as:

- a mere abstraction formulated by theorists

- a series of Events: The history of the personality is the personality.

- reflections of enduring and recurring events as well as of novel and unique

ones

- the Organizing, integrating and governing agent of the individual.

- located in the brain: No personality, no brain.

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 PROCEEDINGS
- These are subject-object interactions or subject-subject interactions of sufficient

duration to include the significant elements of any given behavioral sequence.

- Classifications:

- Internal: day-dreaming, problem-solving, planning, etc.

- External: Has Two Aspects

- Subjective experiential aspect

- Objective behavioral aspect

SERIALS
- In relation to proceedings, serials are longer functional units of behavior.

- They are Directionally organized intermittent succession of proceedings

- E.g. Friendship, marriage, career

- Some proceedings so intimately relate to one another they can only have

meaning within the context of a serial.

- To better understand this concept think of relationships, and not just

interactions.

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 SERIAL PROGRAMS, SCHEDULES,
ORDINATION
Serial Programs: Orderly arrangement of sub-goals that stretch into the future

perhaps for months or years that can eventually lead to some desired end state.

- Schedules: Devices for reducing conflict among competing needs and goals by

arranging for them at different times

- Ordination: The process of plan-making as well as the outcome of the process—

serial program or schedule; can be an umbrella term for serial programs and

schedules.

ABILITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS

personality.

- Abilities can be divided into many areas:

- physical, mechanical, leadership, social, economic, erotic, intellectual

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 ESTABLISHMENT OF PERSONALITY
- Id

- In contrast to Freud’s conception of Id, this includes impulses that are also

acceptable to the self and society.

- Ego

- Murray’s Ego does not really suppress the Id’s instincts but governs them

by moderating their intensities and determining their modes and times of

their fulfilment.

- It is not really an inhibitor/suppressor but it arranges, schedules, and

controls the number in which other motives are to appear.

- Superego

- Similar to Freud’s Superego, this one is also a cultural implant in the

individual’s psyche.

- However, it develops strata (levels), hence, conflicts may develop within

the superego itself among its strata.

- Ego-Ideal

- This is the idealized picture of the self.

- It is intimately related to superego BUT IS NOT PART of the superego.

- It is possible for the superego and ego-ideal to be separated and have

contrasting aspirations.

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 DYNAMICS OF THE PERSONALITY
NEED

- A Need is a construct that represents a force in the brain, a force which

organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation and action in such a

way as to transform a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying situation.

- It is abstract/hypothetical but linked to underlying physiological processes in

the brain.

TYPES OF NEEDS
- Primary/Viscerogenic Needs

- They are linked to organic events.

- Examples are air, water food, sex, lactation, urination, defection.

- Secondary/Psychogenic Needs

- They don’t have connection with organic processes.

- Examples are acquisition, construction, achievement, recognition,

exhibition, dominance, autonomy, deference.

- Overt Needs

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 - Overt needs are permitted direct expression through motor behaviour.

- Covert Needs

- These are generally restrained and repressed, expressed only in fantasy

and dreams.

- Focal Needs

- These are needs that are closely linked to specific environmental objects.

- Fixation: need that is firmly attached to an unsuitable object; usually is

pathological

- Diffuse Needs

- These are needs that are generalized as to be applicable in almost any

environmental setting.

- Although, jumping from one object to another may also be pathological.

- Proactive Needs

- These are needs that are determined from within, spontaneously kinetic.

- These are needs that operate because of something within the person as

opposed to something in the environment.

- Proactor: a person who initiates an interaction

- Reactive Needs

- These are needs activated by something in the environment.

- Reactor: a person who reacts to others

- Effect Needs

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 - These are needs that lead to some desired state or end result.

- Process Activity

- This is a need of performing acts for the sake of performing alone.

- The satisfaction is in the process, not on the result.

- Modal

- Modal need is similar to Process Activity but satisfaction is only

experienced upon gaining a level of mastery of the act.

INTERRELATION/HIERARCY OF NEEDS
- Prepontecy

- There exists a hierarchy of needs with certain tendencies taking

precedence over others.

- Minimal satisfaction of such prepotent needs is necessary before other

needs can operate.

- Conflict between competing needs exist.

- Fusion of Needs

- This is present in instances where the outcome of different needs is

behaviorally the same.

- Subsidiation

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 - A subsidiary need is one that operates in the service of another, where

operation of one need is merely instrumental to the gratification of another.

- Aim represents the specific goal adopted by the person as an expression of the

need.

PRESS
- Press is a property or attribute of the environmental object or person that

facilitates or impedes the efforts of the individual to reach a certain goal.

- The press of an object is what it can do to/for the subject—the power that it has

to affect the well-being of the subject in one way or another.

- Beta Press: This is the object as it is perceived /interpreted by the individual.

- Alpha Press: These are properties of the object as they exist in reality or as

objective inquiry disclose them.

TENSION REDUCTION
- Henry Murray explains that not only does the individual learn to respond in a way

to reduce tension and experience satisfaction, but also he/she learns to develop

tension so that it can later be reduced, thereby enhancing the amount of

pleasure.

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- However, this only applies to effect needs, and not to process and modal

needs.

THEMA
- A thema is a molar and interactive behavioral unit.

- A Thema Includes:

- The press, which is the instigating/triggering situation

- The need that is operating

- Thus, it deals with the interaction between needs and press.

- It permits a more global and less segmental view of behavior.

- Dyadic Unit:

- Not only represents full the nature of the subject but also of the person the

subject is interacting with.

NEED INTEGRATE AND UNITY THEMA

certain kind of interaction with a certain kind of person or object

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- Unity Thema: single pattern of related needs and press, derived from infantile

experience, that gives meaning and coherence to the largest portion of the

individual’s behavior

REGNANT PROCESS
- Physiological accompaniment of a dominant psychological process

- All conscious processes are regnant but not all regnant processes are

conscious. Consciousness is just one product of a dominant psychological

process.

VECTOR-VALUES SCHEME
- Vector:

- broad physical/psychological direction of activity

- Rejection, reception, acquisition, construction, conservation, expression,

transmission, expulsion, destruction, defendence, and avoidance

- Values:

- Body (physical well-being), property (objects, wealth), authority (decision-

making power), affiliation (interpersonal affection), knowledge (facts,

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 theories, science, history), aesthetic (beauty, art), ideology (system of

values, philosophy, religion)

20 NEEDS
1. Abasement: to submit passively to external forces, self-depreciation , low self-

regard

2. Achievement: to accomplish something difficult and overcome obstacles

3. Affiliation: to enjoyably cooperate or reciprocate with an allied other

4. Aggression: to break out overcome opposition forcefully, to fight

5. Autonomy: to get free, shake off restraint, break out of confinement, and strive

for independence

6. Counteraction: to overcome weakness and repress fear

7. Deference: to admire and support a superior, to praise, honor, and serve gladly

8. Defendant: to defend the self against assault, to offer explanation

9. Dominance: to control one’s human environment, to lead and direct

10. Exhibition: to make an impression, self-dramatization

11. Harmavoidance: to avoid pain, physical injury, illness and death

12. Infavoidance: to avoid humiliation and failure

13. Nurturance: to give sympathy and to gratify the needs of a helpless object

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14. Order: to put things in order, to organize

15. Play: to act for fun and avoid serious tension

16. Rejection: to separate oneself and exclude another

17. Sentience: to seek and enjoy sensuous impressions

18. Sex: to form an erotic relationship

19. Succorance: to always have a supporter, to be dependent

20. Understanding: to ask or answer general questions, to analyze experiences

INFANTILE COMPLEXES
- Five highly enjoyable conditions that are terminated, frustrated, or limited at

some point:

1. Secure and dependent existence within the womb (interrupted by birth)

2. Sensuous enjoyment of sucking good nourishment from mother while lying

safely in her arms (halted by weaning)

3. Free enjoyment of defecation (restricted by toilet training)

4. Enjoying the sensations of urination

5. Excitations of genital frictions

- An enduring integrates that determines the course of later development.

- Complexes are results of extension of effects of infantile experiences upon

later behavior.

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- May be normal and abnormal in extreme cases

- Claustral Complex

- Residuals of the uterine life

- Simple Claustral Complex

- Reinstatement of uterine conditions

- Nurturant of motherly objects, death, the past, and resistance to

change

- Needs for passivity, harmavoidance, seclusion,and succorance

- Fear of Insupport Complex

- Fear of open spaces, falling, drowning, earthquake, fire, and family

insupport

- Egression Complex

- Concerned with escaping or departing; displays as cathexis for

open spaces

- Need for travel, to move, for change, claustrophobia and strong

need for autonomy.

- Oral Succorance Complex

- Oral activity plus passive and dependent tendencies

- Sucking, cathexis for oral objects such as the nipple, breast, thumb

- Compulsive eating and drinking

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 - Need for passivity and succorance

- Compulsive eating and drinking

- Cathexis for words, nurturant objects

- Inhibited aggressive needs

- Oral Aggression Complex

- Oral activity plus aggression

- Biting and cathexis for solid oral objects

- Strong aggressive needs

- Ambivalence toward authority figures

- Projection of oral aggression (seeing the environment as full of

aggression)

- Need for harmavoidance, phobia for biting objects and

stuttering

- Oral Rejection Complex

- Involves spitting out and disgust over oral activities

- Negative cathexis for some food, negative cathexis for food

- Fear of oral infection or injury

- Need to reject, for seclusion and autonomy

- Dislike for nurturant objects

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 - Anal Complex

- Derived from events associated with the act of defecating and bowel

movement

- Anal Rejection Complex

- Includes diarrhea and cathexis for feces

- Need for aggression, particularly involving disorder and dirtying or

smearing

- Associated with need for autonomy and anal sexuality

- Anal Retention Complex

- Cathexis for feces but with concealed discussed and negative

reaction for defecation

- Also associated with anal sexuality and need for autonomy—

displayed through resistance to suggestion rather than seeking for

independence/freedom.

- Strong need for order, cleanliness, and retaining of possession

- Parsimony, cleanliness, and obstinacy.

- Urethral Complex

- Involves bedwetting, urethral soiling and urethral erotism

- Icarus Complex

- Cathexis for fire, history of enuresis, craving for immortality, strong

narcissism, lofty ambition that dissolves in the face of failure

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 - Castration Complex

- Murray suggested that this should be given limited meaning than

commonly assigned to.

GENETIC-MATURATIONAL
DETERMINANTS

- Responsible for programming a succession of eras throughout an individual’s life.

- First Era (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood)

- New structural compositions merge and multiply

- Dominance of anabolism

- Middle Era

- Conservative recomposition of already emerged structures and functions

- Equal anabolism and catabolism

- Final Era (senescence)

- Capacity for composition and recomposition decreases

- Increase in atrophy of existing forms and functions

- Dominance of catabolism

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 LEARNING
- Learning consists of discovering what generates pleasure and what generates

distress for the individual.

- The Pleasure/Hedonic Center and Displeasure/Anhedonic Centers of the

brain play crucial roles in learning.

- Retrospective Generators: memories of past experiences that were delightful or

distressful

- Prospective Generators: anticipations of future pleasures or pains

- Learning consists of discovering what generates pleasure and what generates

distress for the individual.

- Generators can be classified as

- Within the person

- Body

- Emotional centers of the brain

- Physiological processes

- conscience

- In the environment

- Interpersonal

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 OTHER IMPORTANT POINTS

- Sociocultural Determinants

- His concept of proceedings and thema imply an interactionist view—a

conviction that full understanding of behavior will follow only when both

subject and object are adequately represented.

- Uniqueness

- Murray always maintained the essential uniqueness of each person, and

even of the each behavioral event.

- Unconscious Processes

- Murray not only accepted the unconscious determinants of behavior but

also recognized the operation of the Freudian mechanisms of repression

and resistance.

- The Socialization Process

- The human personality is a compromise between the individual’s

impulses and the demands and interests of other people, which are

represented collectively by the institutions and cultural patterns to

which the individual is exposed.

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 A LAST LOOK
- Strength

- Murray promoted a serious interest in psychoanalytic theory among the

academicians.

- Murray simultaneously emphasized the importance of the past and the

present context within which behavior takes place.

- Weaknesses

- The theory is too broad; it lost some vigor attached to more specialized

points of view.

- Murray’s too detailed taxonomy of needs made the study of psychology a

bit more complicated than it should be.

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