Explorations in Personality

Book excerpt: Based on a groundbreaking three-year study of 50 college-age men, this modern classic joins the insights and experience of 28 behavioral scientists in the first major exploration of the variables that comprise personality and ways in which they can be measured. Data was accumulated from intensive interviews, specially devised experiments, autobiographies, conversations, childhood memories, "free association" hours, sexual development history, and from exhaustive series of psychological tests to measure predictive abilities, aesthetic appreciation, level of aspiration, memory failure, ethical standards, sensorimotor learning and emotional conditioning. Drawing on this extraordinary fund of information--reported on in detail in this volume--Dr. Murray and his associates set forth an all encompassing theory of personality, and demonstrate, in an 87-page case study," the accuracy with which a complete personality profile can be compiled--from back cover