Harry Stack Sullivan
1892-1948
SULLIVAN INTERPERSONAL
THEORY
Respond Efficiently to Different Behavior
2
FREUD SULLIVAN
Personality governed by un- Personality governed by
modifiable biological factors interpersonal interactions
Sullivan’s CORE IDEAS
First American to construct a Comprehensive Personality
Theory
Emphasizes childhood friendships in the formation of
personality
- Chumship, intimacy, & Security
Personality is shaped from our relationships with others
Personality can never be isolated from the complex of interpersonal relations
in which the person lives
- i.e., Personality cannot be separated from our
social worlds
Sullivan’s Background
Sullivan was born in 1892 in Norwich, New York
the son of a poor working man and farmer
He grew up isolated, and was a loner
Obtained his MD at 25 from a small
Chicago medical school, then was a
psychiatrist at a mental hospital in Maryland
Viewed as a ―clinical wizard‖ in the
treatment of schizophrenia
Never Married
He moved from obscurity to fame in 8 years
Background
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Born on an isolated farm in Near Norwich, NY 21 Feb
1892
Irish-Catholic immigrants of modest financial means
Mother was 39yrs when he was born
Two older sons had both died before 1yr age
Extreme discomfort and awkwardness in social
relationships
Background
Exacerbated by own homosexuality (Perry, 1982)
Viewed homosexuality as pathological and impediment to full-
adaptive functioning and integration to adult society
Suffered schizophrenic breakdown & hospitalised (Perry
1972, 1982)
Acquired unique insight into origins of problems + overcoming
of difficulties
First to initiate therapeutic communities
Awareness of own deficits
Attribution to restricted exposure to interpersonal learning
experiences during growing years
Structure of Personality
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Personality
Purely hypothetical entity
Cannot be observed or studied apart from interpersonal
situations
Other person need not be present – can be illusory or non-
existent figure
Perceiving, remembering, thinking, imaging and all other
psychological processes are interpersonal in character.
“Psychiatry is the study of phenomena that occur in interpersonal
situations, in configurations of two or more people all but one of
whom may be more or less completely illusionary” 1964, pg 33
Unit of study is interpersonal situation and not the person
Structure of Personality
Though hypothetical, personality is at the
dynamic centre of various processes that occur
in a series of interpersonal fields
Dynamisms
Dynamism of Self / Self-system
Personifications
Cognitive processes
Dynamics of Personality - Tensions
Organism is a tension system varying between
absolute relaxation (euphoria) ↔ absolute tension (extreme
terror)
Two main sources of tension are
1. Needs of the Organism
a) Physiochemical Requirements – food, water
b) Emotional Needs – human contact, expressing talent / ability
2. Anxiety – real / imaginary threats to security
Tensions can be regarded as
Needs for particular
energy transformations which will Dissipate tension
With accompanying change of mental state c/a satisfaction
Tensions
potentially for action or actions themselves
(i.e., energy transformations) that may not be
experienced in awareness.
Needs
Tensions brought on by a biological imbalance between
the person and the physiochemical environment, both
inside and outside the organism.
GENERAL
The most basic interpersonal need is that of tenderness.
Can be physiological or interpersonal
ZONAL (oral, genital, manual)
Anxiety
anxiety is disjunctive and calls for no consistent actions for its relief.
Anxiety is the chief disruptive force
blocking our development of good
interpersonal relations.
Energy Transformation
Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt or covert.
Needs to represent an imbalance between biology and the environment that
signal the individual to engage in action.
Dynamics of Personality - Tensions
provokes
NEED Creates TENSION
Energy
SATISFACTION Transforming which
dissipate Tension
DYNAMISM
Typical behavior patterns DYNAMISMS
that characterize a person
throughout a lifetime. Disjunctive/malevolent
– negative interpersonal
behavior
The ways in which an Conjunctive/ intimacy
individual typically meets – positive interpersonal
his or her needs or deals behavior
with anxiety
Isolating/ Lust
– unrelated to interpersonal
wishing evil to others.
Disjunctive destructive patterns of
behavior related to malevolence.
Feeling of living among one‘s enemies
Arises around age 2 or 3
Caused by parental neglect or rejection
Isolating patterns of behavior that are
unrelated to interpersonal behavior (e.g.,
lust).
Self-centered needs
Based largely on sexual
gratification
Conjunctive beneficial patterns of behavior
such as intimacy and the self- system.
Grows out of early needs for
tenderness
Emerges in the “chumship”
Prepubescent best friend relationship
with a peer of equal status
Decreases anxiety and loneliness
Self-System
- The most complex and the inclusive of all dynamisms.
- A consistent patterns of behaviors that maintains people
interpersonal security by protecting them against anxiety.
-Not open to change
- Helps to reduce anxiety.
- Security Operations-
1. dissociation- includes those impulses, desires, and needs that a person
refuses to allow into awareness.
2. selective inattention- is a refusal to see those things that we do not
wish to see that are not consistent to our self-system.
Personifications help maintain emotional
Representations of self and other
equilibrium and reduce anxiety
Separation of the good vs. bad
Mental images that we acquire
during development to help us Self Personifications
understand ourselves and the world
The Bad Me
A cognitive approach to
understanding personality. The Good Me
The Not Me
PERSONIFICATIONS
grows from experiences of punishment and
disapproval
Represents those aspects of the self that are
considered negative and hidden from others and
possibly the self.
Anxiety results from recognition of the bad me
Recalling an embarrassing moment
Guilt about a past action
results from experiences with reward and
approval
Experiences associated with tenderness
and intimacy
Everything we like about ourselves
The part of us we share with others and prefer to
focus on because it produces no anxiety
Persona ?
anxiety provoking experiences that invoke
security operations may become dissociated
from self to form the not-me.
Security operations = Sullivan‘s concept of
defense mechanisms
Experiences that are denied
Experiences that are kept out of awareness and
repressed
Acknowledging not-me experiences creates high
anxiety/ negative emotion.
Development of
Mental theory
Cognitive
Social
Cognitive Development
Prototaxic Mode Parataxic Mode Syntactic Mode
Infancy + Early Early Childhood Development of
childhood Language + Consensual
validation
• Disconnected • Momentary • Logical order
Momentary Experiences between
Experiences as recorded in experiences
totalities sequence • Temporal
• No temporal • Apparent sequencing
relationship connection present
• No meaning for • Symbolic / Co- • Logical connections
experiencing person incidental • External validity
connections • Internal Consistency
• Logic absent
Mystical experiences, Transference, Normal mature thinking
Schizophrenic fusions paranoid ideation
7 Developmental
Stages Each stage involves specific
interpersonal challenges or tasks, and
Infancy specific types of interpersonal
Childhood relationships
Juvenile Era
Preadolescence Personality change is most likely during
the transitions between stages
Early Adolescence
Late Adolescence
Personality continues to evolve from
Adulthood infancy through adulthood
STAGES OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
A. Infancy
Tenderness from mothering one
Learns anxiety from the mother through empathy
B. Childhood
Imaginary playmate (i.e., eidetic
personification)
Practice social relations/ rehearsal
Safe, secure relationships to practice with no threat of
negative consequences
C. Juvenile Era
Need for peers of equal status
Children learn how to compete, compromise, and
cooperate.
D. Pre-adolesence
a time for intimacy with one particular
person, usually a person with the same
gender.
boy-boy or girl-girl chumships.
E. Early Adolesence
puberty and ends with the need for sexual
love
It is marked by the eruption of genital
interest and the advent of lustful
relationships.
Intimacy and lust towards several persons.
F. Late Adolescence
Feel both intimacy and lust toward the
same person
Learn how to live in the adult world
Discovery of self
G. Adulthood
Person establishes a stable relationship
with a significant other person.
F. Late Adolescence
Feel both intimacy and lust toward the
same person
Learn how to live in the adult world
Discovery of self
G. Adulthood
Person establishes a stable relationship
with a significant other person.
Development Age Cognitive Mode Primary Need Effects of
Era Anxiety
Infancy Birth to onset of Prototaxic Bodily Contact Apathy
Language Tenderness Somnolent
detachment
Childhood Onset of Parataxic Parents’ praise Mod – chronic
language to + acceptance anxiety, insecurity
beginning school Severe –
Malevolent
Transformation
Juvenile 5-8yrs Parataxic Approval + Too great need to
acceptance control /
outside family dominate
Restrictive /
Prejudiced
Preadolescence 8-12 yrs Syntactic Genuine Inability to
intimacy with develop
chum attachment, love
Adolescence
33 Puberty onwards Syntactic -do- + lust
MENTAL DISORDERS
All mental disorders have an interpersonal
origin and can be understood only with
reference to the person‘s social
environment.
Interpersonal theories emerge in 1980‘s
and 1990‘s
Psychotherapy
Promoted Interpersonal Psychotherapy
Pioneered the notion of the therapist as
a participant observer.
Originated Group Psychotherapy
ABNORMALITY
Sullivansaw personality as being largely formed from
interpersonal relations.
Insisted that humans have no existence outside the interpersonal situation.
Theory emphasizes:
social influences over biological ones;
Rates high on unconscious determinants,
average on free choice, optimism, and causality,
and low on uniqueness
CONCEPT OF HUMANITY
