During his period at Harvard, Murray sat in on lectures by
Alfred North Whitehead, whose
process philosophy marked his philosophical and metaphysical thinking throughout his professional career. In 1927, at the age of 33, Murray became assistant director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. He developed the concepts of 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 collaborated with
Stanley Cobb, Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at the Medical School, to introduce psychoanalysis into the Harvard curriculum but to keep those who taught it away from the decision-making apparatus in Vienna. He and Cobb set the stage for the founding of the
Boston Psychoanalytic Society after 1931, but both were excluded from membership on political grounds. In 1935, Murray and Morgan developed the concept of apperception and the assumption that everyone's thinking is shaped by subjective processes, the rationale behind the
Thematic apperception test. They used the term "apperception" to refer to the process of projecting fantasy imagery onto an objective stimulus. In 1937, Murray became director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. In 1938 he published
Explorations in Personality, a classic in psychology, which includes a description of the Thematic Apperception Test. In 1938 Murray acted as a consultant for the British Government, setting up the Officer Selection Board. Murray's work at The Harvard Psychological Clinic enabled him to apply his theories in the design of the selection processes with a "situation test", an assessment based on practical tasks and activities, an analysis of
specific criteria (e.g. "leadership") by a number of raters across a range of activities. Results were pooled to achieve an overall assessment.
World War II, Office of Strategic Services, 1939–1945 During
World War II, he left Harvard and worked as
lieutenant colonel for the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS). James Miller, in charge of the selection of secret agents at the OSS during World War II, said the situation test was used by British War Officer Selection Board and OSS to assess potential agents. In 1943 Murray helped complete
Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler, commissioned by OSS boss Gen.
William "Wild Bill" Donovan. The report was done in collaboration with
psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer, Ernst Kris,
New School for Social Research, and
Bertram D. Lewin,
New York Psychoanalytic Institute. The report used many sources to profile
Hitler, including informants such as
Ernst Hanfstaengl,
Hermann Rauschning,
Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe,
Gregor Strasser,
Friedelind Wagner, and
Kurt Lüdecke. The groundbreaking study was the pioneer of
offender profiling and political psychology. In addition to predicting that Hitler would choose suicide if defeat for Germany was near, Murray's collaborative report stated that Hitler was impotent as far as heterosexual relations were concerned and that there was a possibility that Hitler had participated in a homosexual relationship. The report stated: "The belief that Hitler is homosexual has probably developed (a) from the fact that he does show so many
feminine characteristics, and (b) from the fact that there were so many homosexuals in the
Party during the early days and many continue to occupy important positions. It is probably true that Hitler calls
Albert Forster 'Bubi', which is a common nickname employed by homosexuals in addressing their partners."
Harvard human experiments, 1959–1962 In 1947, he returned to Harvard as a chief researcher, lectured and established with others the
Psychological Clinic Annex. From late 1959 to early 1962, Murray was responsible for
unethical experiments in which he used twenty-two Harvard undergraduates as research subjects. Alston Chase's book
Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist connects Kaczynski's abusive experiences under Murray to his later criminal career. Kaczynski himself disputed connections made between Murray's experiments and the Unabomber bombings, stating that throughout the study, he only had one unpleasant experience for just 30 minutes. In 1960,
Timothy Leary started research in
psychedelic drugs at Harvard, which Murray is said to have supervised. Some sources have suggested that Murray's experiments were part of, or indemnified by, the United States government's research into mind control, known as the
MKUltra project. ==Retirement and death==