Harry Murrell

Founder of Cognitive Personality Theory (CPT)

Harry Murrell is the founder of Cognitive Personality Theory (CPT) – a new approach to personality that moves beyond fixed labels and traits, instead mapping the different ways people experience and process the world. Since 2019, he has developed CPT into a full framework with its own syntax, Compass model, and applied training tools, drawing on both psychological research and years of client practice.

Harry holds a First Class MSc in the Psychology of Individual Differences from the University of Edinburgh, where he specialised in personality, cognition, and intelligence research. This academic foundation gave him both the technical grounding and the critical distance to question the limits of existing systems, from MBTI to the Big Five, and to build something new from first principles.

Alongside his academic work, Harry has spent more than five years as a coach and consultant, working with over a thousand clients worldwide. These sessions were not only practical applications of CPT but also living case studies, helping refine the model so that it stays fluid, testable, and applicable to real human complexity. His ability to integrate theory with lived experience has made him one of the most recognised voices in modern typology, with his Cognitive Personality YouTube channel now followed by over 40,000 people.

Before turning to psychology, Harry was a professional musician – a guitarist, pianist, and composer. He brings the same sensibility to CPT: systems as compositions, personalities as resonances, frameworks as structures that move and adapt. His core philosophy is simple: people are not boxes to be fitted into, but systems to be understood. CPT is his attempt to create a language that honours that.