Henry A. Murray

INDISPENSABLES FOR THE MAKING, TESTING, AND REMAKING OF A PERSONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

To reduce the probability of an eruption of disastrous semantic misunderstandings, it seems best t o state a t the outset what meanings are being ascribed to each of the critical terms in this discourse. “Personology” has proved, in my experience, t o be a neater and (with its adjectival form) a more pliable term than the sprawling, cumbersome “psychology of personality.” “Personology” has been advocated in order t o avoid the cultish practice of using a word that refers to a particular theorist rather than t o a definable field of interest. Freud’s “psychoanalysis is my creation” was a scarcely excusable scientific heresy. “Personology” is for everyone for free.1 Next in order is “personality,”* which is the most comprehensive term we have in psychology, including, as it does, the entire system of subsystems (of situational dispositions: structures and functions) as they undergo their serial transformations through the fullest span: from birth t o death. At this point its chief meaning is that of domain of scientific concern from which nothing psychological is excluded o n principle. Then we come t o “system,” which may be today’s most fashionable scientific word.293 It is applicable from the smallest t o the largest definable unit of reality-from an atom t o the solar system. Its use points t o the fact that one is dealing-not with a single, singular, solitary, isolated entity-a solid material particle-, o r not with a mere aggregate of independent entities-a randomly behaving rabble-not a list, not an inventory; but an assemblage of interdependent units. Its meaning is exemplified in this paper by three of its uses.4 In my title the term refers to a conceptual system-a coherent, self-consistent assemblage of abstract concepts and postulates, in terms of which any event in the life of a person should be representable and explainable. In contrast to this system of abstractions we may want t o refer t o the living system, as James G. Miller names it5 -the ongoing, concrete organization of psychological states and processes in the head of a given individual. Finally, we have an assessment system-an organi-