ABSTRACT
In 1947, Henry Murray offered four reasons to explain the paucity of case histories in the psychological literature:
1) Every life, swift to the self as it may be, is long and complicated to the psychologist, and many hours are required for explorations of a few portions of it. 2) Man’s power to recall his past is, at best, deficient, and, at worst, radically subverted by the devious devices of his vanity. 3) Man is a reputation guarding animal who bristles with defenses when the cool eye of scientific scrutiny is cast on a crucial area of his secret life. 4) The psychologist’s conscience, acknowledging that every man is entitled to his privacy, forbids unscrupulous intrusions. (Murray, 1947/1955, p. 15)
