Scope and Content Note
The papers of John Milne Murray (1896-1982) span the years 1915-1982, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1933-1976. Included are correspondence, subject files, writings, and miscellaneous material, with the focus on Murray's professional life as a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Educated at Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, Murray studied at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute during the 1920s, when he became acquainted with Sigmund Freud and Freudian psychoanalysis. He met Freud several times while a student and worked closely with Freud's daughter, Anna, also a psychoanalyst. From the mid-1930s until World War II, Murray served on the staffs of various New England mental health facilities and as a consultant and lecturer at several universities. During and after the war, he was prominent in shaping psychiatric training programs for the United States Air Force and Defense Department, and was a frequent consultant to the postwar Veterans Administration. The collection is organized in four series: Correspondence , Subject File , Writings File , and Miscellany .
The most notable feature of the Murray Papers concerns his work during World War II, when as chief psychiatrist in the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the air force from 1942 to 1945, Murray was instrumental in introducing psychiatric concepts and training to the American military. His task was to establish a program to deal systematically with the problems of air force pilots—the difficulties they experienced as inductees, the stress associated with flight training, and the need to identify and treat flying fatigue during combat. Both the Correspondence series and the Subject File focus extensively on these issues. They also highlight the development of on-the-job teacher training facilities that Murray helped establish for flight surgeons who joined treatment programs in convalescent hospitals following their return from overseas. After the war, various educational foundations used the training program as a model for including psychiatry in all areas of medical treatment. Murray's ongoing role in this effort and on behalf of rehabilitation of war veterans is illustrated by various files in the collection, including subject categories involving the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the United States Veterans Administration, and mental health facilities and offices in Massachusetts.
Another emphasis of the papers is on Murray's close ties to the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, of which he was a founding member. He was president of the institute for three terms during the 1940s and mid-1950s, and the Subject File contains numerous materials relating to the institute's structure and activities from 1946 until 1972. Other files treat Murray's association with Boston University, where he was professor of clinical psychiatry from 1945 to 1962, and his connections to Dartmouth and Smith colleges. Among the frequent or prominent correspondents in the papers are Dwight D. Eisenhower, Frank Fremont-Smith, Anna Freud, Lawrence S. Kubie, William Claire Menninger, Eugene Meyer, and Howard McC. Snyder.