Assessment in Murray's Theory

Assessment in Murray’s Theory. [image]. Charlotte G. Capero Reporter.

Murray’s techniques for assessing personality differ from those of Freud and the other neo psychoanalytic theorists. Because Murray was not working with emotionally disturbed persons, he did not use such standard psychoanalytic techniques as free association and dream analysis. For his intensive evaluation of the normal personality, Murray used a variety of techniques to collect data from 51 male undergraduate students at Harvard University. The research participants were interviewed and given projective tests, objective tests, and questionnaires covering childhood memories, family relations, sexual development, sensory-motor learning, ethical standards, goals, social interactions, and mechanical and artistic abilities. This assessment program was so comprehensive that it took Murray’s staff of 28 investigators 6 months to complete. We discuss these data in the section on research in Murray’s theory..

The OSS Assessment Program. During the World War II 1941–1945), Murray directed an assessment program for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a forerunner of the CIA. His goal was to select people to serve as spies and saboteurs, operating behind enemy lines in hazardous situations. Potential candidates for OSS positions were interviewed and given the Rorschach and the TAT projective tests and questionnaires covering a variety of topics. In addition, candidates participated in situational tests, which were stressful situations that simulated experiences they could expect to encounter on the job. Their behavior in these tests was closely observed (OSS Assessment Staff, 1948). One such test required the candidate to build a bridge across a stream in a fixed period of time. No plans were provided, but the person was assigned a group of workers to assist him. In this way the candidate’s ingenuity, ability to improvise, and leadership skills could be assessed in a realistic setting..

To determine the candidate’s reaction to frustration, the assistants included some stooges—people instructed to do everything possible to prevent the building of the bridge. Many candidates became enraged, and some were even reduced to tears, when faced with the lack of cooperation and the mounting frustration at being unable to complete the task. This pioneering attempt at employee selection through large-scale personality assessment has evolved into the successful assessment-center approach widely used in business today to select promising leaders and executives. The OSS program provides a striking example of the practical application of assessment techniques originally intended purely for research..

The Thematic Apperception Test. [image]. The assessment technique most often associated with Murray is the Thematic Apperception Test. The TAT consists of a set of ambiguous pictures depicting simple scenes. The person taking the test is asked to compose a story that describes the people and objects in the picture, including what might have led up to the situation and what the people are thinking and feeling. Murray derived the TAT, which is a projective technique, from Freud’s defense mechanism of projection. In projection, a person attributes or projects disturbing impulses onto someone else. In the TAT, the person projects those feelings onto the characters in the pictures and thereby reveals his or her troubling thoughts to the researcher or therapist. Thus, the TAT is a device for assessing unconscious thoughts, feelings, and fears..

Interpreting the responses to the TAT pictures is a subjective process, as Murray admitted in an interview. He referred to the TAT as a kind of booby trap which may catch more embryo psychologists than patients. The patient reveals parts of himself when he composes a story to explain the picture. Then the psychologist may reveal parts of himself when he composes a formulation to explain the patient’s story. (quoted in Hall, 1968, p. 61) In the hands of a trained clinician, the TAT can reveal considerable useful information. Because of its subjectivity, however, the information obtained should be used to supplement data from more objective methods rather than as the sole means of diagnosis. Yet despite the TAT’s lack of standardized procedures for administering, scoring, and interpreting it, as well as its low criterion-related validity, the test continues to be used frequently for research, therapy, and assessment (Kaplan & Saccuzzo, 2005).

A typical picture contained in the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). In describing a TAT picture, people may reveal their own feelings, needs, and values. Typical Responses to TAT Card: 1. This is the picture of a woman who all her life has been a very suspicious, conniving person. She’s looking in the mirror and she sees reflected behind her an image of what she will be as an old woman—still a suspicious, conniving sort of person. She can’t stand the thought that that’s what her life will eventually lead her to, and she smashes the mirror and runs out of the house screaming and goes out of her mind and lives in an institution for the rest of her life..

[image] Thematic Apperception Test. 2. This woman has always emphasized beauty in her life. As a little girl she was praised for being pretty and as a young woman was able to attract lots of men with her beauty. While secretly feeling anxious and unworthy much of the time, her outer beauty helped to disguise these feelings from the world and, sometimes, from herself. Now that she is getting on in years and her children are leaving home, she is worried about the future. She looks in the mirror and imagines herself as an old hag—the worst possible person she could become, ugly and nasty—and wonders what the future holds for her. It is a difficult and depressing time for her..