HARRY STACK SULLIVAN (1892-1949)

Interpersonal Theory
Biography of Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan, the first American to develop a comprehensive personality theory,
was born in a small farming community in upstate New York in 1892.
A socially immature and isolated child, Sullivan nevertheless formed one close
interpersonal relationship with a boy five years older than himself. In his interpersonal
theory, Sullivan believed that such a relationship has the power to transform an immature
preadolescent into a psychologically healthy individual. Six years after becoming a
physician, and with no training in psychiatry, Sullivan gained a position at St. Elizabeth's
Hospital in Washington, D.C., as a psychiatrist. There, his ability to work with
schizophrenic patients won him a reputation as a therapeutic wizard. However, despite
achieving much respect from an influential group of associates, Sullivan had few close
interpersonal relations with any of his peers. He died alone in Paris in 1949, at age 56.

Overview of Sullivans Interpersonal Theory

Although Sullivan had a lonely and isolated childhood, he evolved a theory of personality
that emphasized the importance of interpersonal relations. He insisted that personality is
shaped almost entirely by the relationships we have with other people. Sullivan's
principal contribution to personality theory was his conception of developmental stages.

Tensions:
Sullivan conceptualized personality as an energy system, with energy existing either as
tension (potentiality for action) or as energy transformations (the actions themselves). He
further divided tensions into needs and anxiety.

Needs:
Needs can relate either to the general well-being of a person or to specific zones, such as
the mouth or genitals. General needs can be either physiological, such as food or oxygen,
or they can be interpersonal such as tenderness and intimacy.

Anxiety:
Unlike needs-which are conjunctive and call for specific actions to reduce them-anxiety
is disjunctive and calls for no consistent actions for its relief. All infants learn to be
anxious through the empathic relationship that they have with their mothering one.

Sullivan called anxiety the chief disruptive force in interpersonal relations. A complete
absence of anxiety and other tensions is called euphoria.

Dynamisms:
Sullivan used the term dynamism to refer to a typical pattern of behavior. Dynamisms
may relate either to specific zones of the body or to tensions.

Malevolence:
The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred is called malevolence, defined by Sullivan
as a feeling of living among one's enemies. Those children who become malevolent have
much difficulty giving and receiving tenderness or being intimate with other people.

Intimacy:
The conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal relationship between two people
of equal status is called intimacy. Intimacy facilitates interpersonal development while
decreasing both anxiety and loneliness.

Lust:
In contrast to both malevolence and intimacy, lust is an isolating dynamism. That is, lust
is a self-centered need that can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate interpersonal
relationship. In other words, although intimacy presupposes tenderness or love, lust is
based solely on sexual gratification and requires no other person for its satisfaction.

Self-System:
The most inclusive of all dynamisms is the self-system, or that pattern of behaviors that
protects us against anxiety and maintains our interpersonal security. The self-system is a
conjunctive dynamism, but because its primary job is to protect the self from anxiety, it
tends to stifle personality change. Experiences that are inconsistent with our self-system
threaten our security and necessitate our use of security operations, which consist of
behaviors designed to reduce interpersonal tensions. One such security operation is
dissociation, which includes all those experiences that we block from awareness. Another
is selective inattention, which involves blocking only certain experiences from
awareness.

Personifications:
Sullivan believed that people acquire certain images of self and others throughout
the developmental stages, and he referred to these subjective perceptions
as personifications.

Bad-Mother, Good-Mother:
The bad-mother personification grows out of infants' experiences with a nipple
that does not satisfy their hunger needs. All infants experience the bad-mother
personification, even though their real mothers may be loving and nurturing. Later,

infants acquire a good-mother personification as they become mature enough to

recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of their mothering one. Still later, these
two personifications combine to form a complex and contrasting image of the real
mother.

Me Personifications:
During infancy, children acquire three "me" personifications:
(1) The bad-me, which grows from experiences of punishment and disapproval.
(2) The good-me, which results from experiences with reward and approval.
(3) The not-me, which allows a person to dissociate or selectively in attend the
experiences related to anxiety.

Eidetic Personification:
One of Sullivan's most interesting observations was that people often create imaginary
traits that they project onto others. Included in these eidetic personifications are the
imaginary playmates that pre-aged school children often have. These imaginary
friends enable children to have a safe, secure relationship with another person, even
though that person is imaginary.

Levels of Cognition:
Sullivan recognized three levels of cognition, or ways of perceiving things,

Prototaxic Level:
Experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others are called
prototaxic. Newborn infants experience images mostly on a prototaxic level, but adults,
too, frequently have preverbal experiences that are momentary and incapable of being
communicated.

Parataxic Level:
Experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to
others are called parataxic. Included in these are erroneous assumptions about cause and
effect, which Sullivan termed parataxic distortions.

Syntaxic Level:
Experiences that can be accurately communicated to others are called syntaxic. Children
become capable of syntaxic language at about 12 to 18 months of age when words begin
to have the same meaning for them that they do for others.

Stages of Development:
Infancy
Age birth to 1 year

Childhood
Ages 1 to 5

Juvenile
Ages 6 to 8

Preadolescence
Ages 9 to 12

From birth to about age one, the

child begins the process of
developing, but Sullivan did not
emphasize the younger years to
near the importance as Freud.

The development of speech and

improved communication is key
in this stage of development.

The main focus as a juvenile is

the need for playmates and the
beginning
of
healthy
socialization

During this stage, the child's

ability to form a close
relationship with a peer is the
major focus. This relationship
will later assist the child in
feeling worthy and likable.
Without this ability, forming the
intimate relationships in late
adolescence and adulthood will
be difficult.

Early Adolescence
Ages 13 to 17

Late Adolescence
Ages 18 to 22 or 23

Adulthood
Ages 23 on

Psychological Disorders:

The onset of puberty changes

this need for friendship to a
need for sexual expression. Self
worth will often become
synonymous
with
sexual
attractiveness and acceptance by
opposite sex peers.

The need for friendship and

need for sexual expression get
combined
during
late
adolescence. In this stage a long
term relationship becomes the
primary
focus.
Conflicts
between parental control and
self-expression
are
commonplace and the overuse
of selective inattention in
previous stages can result in a
skewed perception of the self
and the world.

The struggles of adulthood

include
financial
security,
career, and family. With success
during
previous
stages,
especially
those
in
the
adolescent
years,
adult
relationships and much needed
socialization become more easy
to attain. Without a solid
background,
interpersonal
conflicts that result in anxiety
become more commonplace.

Sullivan believed that disordered behavior has an interpersonal origin, and can only be
understood with reference to a person's social environment.

Psychotherapy:
Sullivan pioneered the notion of the therapist as a participant observer, who establishes
an
interpersonal
relationship
with
the
patient.
He
was
primarily
concerned with understanding patients and helping them develop foresight,
improve interpersonal relations, and restore their ability to operate mostly
on a syntaxic level.

Characteristic Research and Research Methods:

As because it
aroused too much anxiety. Other methods were tried but these also proved to provoke
anxiety that interferes with communication process between patient and therapist.
Sullivan became interested in studying that forces that impede and facilitate
communication between two people. In so doing, he found that the psychiatrist was much
more than an observer, he or she was also a vital participant in an interpersonal situation.
The psychiatrist had his or her own apprehensions, such as professional a young
psychiatrist, Sullivan discovered that the method of free association did not work
satisfactorily with schizophrenics competence and personal problems, to deal with. As a
result of the discovery Sullivan, his conception of therapist as a participant observer.

a-The Interview
The psychiatric interview is Sullivans term for a type of interpersonal, face to face
situation that take place between the patient and the therapist. There may be only one
interview or there may be a sequence of interviews with a patient extending over a long
period of time. Sullivan defines the interview as a system, or series of systems, of
interpersonal processes, arising from participant observation in which the interviewer
derives certain conclusions about the interviews. How the interview is conducted and
the ways in which the interviewer reaches conclusions regarding the patient from the
subject matter of Sullivans book, the psychiatric interview (1954).
Sullivan divides the interview into four stages:
1) The formal inception,
(2) Reconnaissance,
(3) Detailed inquiry,
(4) The termination
The interview is primarily a vocal communication between two people. Not only what the
person says but how he or she says it, rate of speech and other expressive behavior are the
chief sources of information for the interviewer. The interviewer should be alert to subtle
changes in the patient vocalizations (e.g changes in volume) because these clues often

reveals vital evidence regarding the patients focal problems and attitudinal changes
towards the therapist. In the inception, the interviewer should avoid asking too many
questions but should maintain an attitude of quiet observations. The interviewer should
try to determine the reasons for the patients coming and something about the nature of
the patients problems.

Research on Schizophrenia:
In his association with the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt hospital in Maryland, during the
years 1924 to 1931, and reveal Sullivans great talents for making contact with and
understanding the mind of psychotic. Empathy was highly developed trait in Sullivans
personality, and he used it to excellent advantage in studying and treating the victims of
schizophrenia.

Critique of Sullivan:
Despite Sullivan's insights into the importance of interpersonal relations, his theory of
personality and his approach to psychotherapy have lost popularity in recent years. In
summary, his theory rates very low in falsifiability, low in its ability to generate research,
and average in its capacity to organize knowledge and to guide action. In addition, it is
only average in self-consistency and low in parsimony.

Concept of Humanity:
Because Sullivan saw human personality as being largely formed from interpersonal
relations, his theory rates very high on social influences and very low on biological ones.
In addition, it rates high on unconscious determinants, average on free choice, optimism,
and causality, and low on uniqueness.