An Interview with 2019 Murray Award Winner, Phebe Cramer
1. What or who has most influenced your ideas about personality?
Psychoanalytic theory
2. If you had to pick a high point in your career, what would it be and why? What about a low point?
High point: Murray award!
Low point: trying to get academic journals to accept research on defense mechanisms
3. Which topics in our field do you think are still burning questions, and which may emerge in the next years?
Still burning: factors (genetic, environmental) that influence personality change.
Emerging: interaction between genetics and environment
4. What fields do you think personality psychology should be collaborating with?
Genetics, sociology, anthropology
5. Where do you think that personality psychology is, or maybe should be, headed towards in the future?
More attention to childhood precursors of later personality, and more longitudinal studies.