Dr. Henry A. Murray

Dr Henry Murray was an American psychologists who taught in Harvard University.
The beginnings of his theory started with his relationships with his parents. In the book "Perspectives on Personality" p100, note that "he got on well with his father but had a poor relationship with his mother" resulting in a deep-seated feeling of depression.He then became aware of the people's needs will determine the behaviour of the people.
Later on in his life, he fell in love with Morgan, another woman outside his marriage. At that time, he was reluctant to leave his wife. From this experience he realised that conflicting needs,'the pressure that can result, and the links to motivation'.
In 1927, Murray developed different concepts like latent needs (not openly displayed), manifest needs (observed in people's actions), "press" (external influences on motivation) and "thema" - "a pattern of press and need that coalesces around particular interactions". Murray used the term "apperception" to refer to the process of projecting fantasy imagery onto an objective stimulus. The concept of apperception and the assumption that everyone's thinking is shaped by subjective processes provides the rationale behind the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).

Henry Murray (1893 - 1988) was active in developing a theory of motivation throughout the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s. He believed that a need is a potentiality or readiness to respond in a certain way under certain given circumstances (Murray, et al. 1938, p. 124).

A major assumption of Murray’s theory was that behaviour is driven by an internal state of disequilibrium. In other words we have a LACK of something and this drives us. We are dissatisfied and we desire something.Thus we will behave in a certain fashion. We will carry on behaving in this way until we reach equilibrium.

In 1943, while working for the OSS, he was asked by his superior to work on analysis of the personality of Adolph Hitler.

In Dr. Henry A. Murray's article of Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler:
With Predictions of His Future Behavior and Suggestions
for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surrender found in
http://library.lawschool.cornell.edu/WhatWeHave/SpecialCollections/Donovan/Hitler/index.cfm
He predicted that Hitler will end his life in the face of defeat of the Germany in WWI based on his needs theory. Murray pegged Hitler's personality as "counteractive narcism," a type that is stimulated by real or imagined insult or injury. According to Dr. Murray, the characteristics of this personality type include: holding grudges, low tolerance for criticism, excessive demands for attention, inability to express gratitude, a tendency to belittle, bully, and blame others, desire for revenge, persistence in the face of defeat, extreme self-will, self-trust, inability to take a joke, and compulsive criminality. Dr. Murray concluded that Hitler had these characteristics (and others) to an extreme degree and lacked the offsetting qualities that round out a balanced personality.

Slides on Henry Murray

Henry Murray and TAT
What is TAT?
Another popular projective test is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) in which a patient views ambiguous scenes of people, and is asked to describe various aspects of the scene; for example, the patient may be asked to describe what led up to this scene, the emotions of the characters, and what might happen afterwards. The examiner then evaluates these descriptions, attempting to discover conflicts and hidden emotions within the patient, and work toward a successful psychoanalytic cure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective_test)

Henry Murray's concept of personality