Henry Murray was born into a wealthy family in New York in 1893. He had an older sister and a younger brother. Carver and Scheier, in "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. They hypothesize that the disruption of this relationship led Murray to be especially aware of people's needs and their importance as underlying determinants of behavior. At Harvard, he majored in history with a poor performance, but compensated with football, rowing and boxing. At Columbia College he did much better in medicine and completed M.D. and also received an M.A. in biology 1919. For the next two years he was an instructor in physiology at Harvard and 1927 he received his doctor