Harry Stack Sullivan

Interpersonal Theory
Harry Stack Sullivan, the first American to construct a comprehensive personality theory, believed
that people develop their personality within a social context. Without other people, Sullivan contended,
humans would have no personality. “A personality can never be isolated from the complex of
interpersonal relations in which the person lives and has his being”. Sullivan insisted that knowledge of
human personality can be gained only through the scientific study of interpersonal relations.

Sullivan believed that people achieve healthy development when they are able to experience both
intimacy and lust toward the same other person. Ironically, Sullivan’s own relationship with other people
were seldom satisfying. As a child, he was lonely and physically isolated, he suffered at least one
schizophrenic episode; and as an adult, he experienced only superficial and ambivalent interpersonal
relationships. Despite, or perhaps because of, these interpersonal difficulties, Sullivan contributed much
to an understanding of Human personality.

 Biography
 Born in the small farming town of Norwich, New York
 On February 21, 1892
 Graduated from High School at age 16 and spent his first year college at Cornell
University.
 In 1911, he transferred to the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery and
earned his MD in 1917.
 In 1921, he worked under William Alanson White as a neuropsychiatries at St.
Elizabeth Hospital in Washington DC.
 In 1925, he was employed at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Maryland, where he
became director of chemical research.

 Tensions

Like Freud and Jung, Sullivan saw personality as an energy system. Energy can exist either as
tension (potentiality for action) or as actions themselves (energy transformations). Tension is a
potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness. Thus, not all tensions are
consciously felt. Many tensions, such as anxiety, premonitions, drowsiness, hunger, and sexual
excitement, are felt but not always on a conscious level. Sullivan recognized two types of tensions:

 Needs – usually result in productive actions. Needs are tension brought on by biological
imbalance between a person and the physiochemical environment, both inside and outside the
organism. Needs are episodic once they are satisfied, they temporarily lose their power, but after
a time, they are likely to recur.
 Anxiety – differs from tensions of needs in that it is disjunctive, is more diffuse and vague, and
calls forth no consistent actions for its relief.
 Energy Transformations – tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt or
covert. This somewhat awkward term simply refers to our behaviors that are aimed at
satisfying needs and reducing anxiety the two great tensions. Not all energy
 transformations are obvious, overt actions; many take the form of emotions, thoughts, or
covert behaviors that can be hidden from other people.

 Dynamisms

A term that means about the same as traits or habit patterns. Dynamisms are of two major
classes: first, those related to specific zones of the body; second, those related to tensions. This second
class is composed of three categories the disjunctive, isolating, and the conjunctive. Disjunctive
dynamisms include those destructive patterns of behavior that are related to the concept of malevolence;
Isolating dynamisms include those behavior patterns (such as lust): and the conjunctive dynamisms
include beneficial behavior patterns, such as intimacy and the self-system.

 Malevolence – the disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred, characterized by the feeling of living
among one’s enemies. It originates around age 2 or 3 years when children’s actions that earlier
had brought about maternal tenderness are rebuffed, ignored, or met with anxiety and pain.
Malevolent actions often take the form of timidity.
 Intimacy – an integrating dynamism that tends to draw out loving reactions from the other
person, thereby decreasing anxiety and loneliness, two extremely painful experiences, because
intimacy helps us avoid anxiety and loneliness, it is a rewarding experience that most healthy
people desire.
 Lust – an isolating tendency, requiring no other person for its satisfaction. Lust is an especially
powerful dynamism during adolescence, at which time it often leads to a reduction of self-esteem.
In addition, lust often hinders an intimate relationship, especially during early adolescence when it
easily confused with sexual attraction.
 Self –system – a conjunctive dynamism that arises out of the interpersonal situation. As a
children develop intelligence and foresight, they become able to learn which behaviors are related
to an increase or decrease in anxiety. This ability to detect slight increases or decreases in
anxiety provides the self-system with a built in warning device.

 Personification
Beginning in infancy and continuing throughout the various developmental stages, people
acquire certain images of themselves and others. It may be relatively accurate, or because they
are colored by people’s needs and anxieties, they may be grossly distorted. Sullivan described
three basic personification that develop during infancy:

 Bad- Mother, Good-Mother – these two personification, one based on the infant’s
perception of an anxious, malevolent mother and the other based on a calm, tender
mother, combine to form a complex personification composed of constructing qualities
projected onto the same person. Until the infant develops language, however, these two
opposing images of mother can easily coexist.
 Me Personification – during midinfancy a child acquires three me personifications (bad-
me, good-me, and not-me) that form building blocks of the self-personification.
- The bad-me is fashioned from experiences of punishment and
disapproval that infants receive from their mothering one.
- The good-me results from infants’ experiences with reward and
approval. Infants feel good about themselves when they perceive
their mother’s expressions of tenderness.
- Sudden severe anxiety, however, may cause an infant to form the
not-me personification and to either dissociate or selectively in
attend experiences related to that anxiety.
  Eidetic Personification – unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that many children invent
in order to protect their self-esteem. Sullivan believed that these imaginary friends may
be a significant to a child’s development as real playmates.

 Levels of Cognition

It refer to ways of perceiving, imagining, and conceiving. Sullivan divided cognition into three
levels or modes of experience: prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic.

 Prototaxic Level – the earliest and most primitive experiences of an infant take place on
a prototaxic level. These experiences cannot be communicated to others, they are
difficult to describe or define. One way to understand the term is to imagine the earliest
subjective experiences of a newborn baby.
 Parataxic Level – experiences are prelogical and usually result when a person assumes
a cause-and-effect relationship between two events that occur coincidentally. More
clearly differentiated than prototaxic experiences, but their meaning remains private.
 Syntaxic Level – experienced that are consensually validated and that can be
symbolically communicated take place on a syntaxic level. Consensually validated
experiences are those on whose meaning two or more persons agree.

 Stages of Development

Sullivan postulated seven epochs or stages of development, each crucial to the formation of
human personality. The thread of interpersonal relations runs throughout the stages; other people are
indispensable to a person’s development from infancy to mature adulthood.

Stage Age Significant others Interpersonal Process Important

Learnings
Infancy 0 to 2 Mothering one Tenderness Good mother/ bad
mother; good
me/bad me
Childhood 2 to 6 Parents Protect security through Syntaxic
imaginary playmates language
Juvenile era 6 to 8 Playmates of equal Orientation toward living Competition,
status in the world of peers compromise,
cooperation
Preadolescence 8 to 13 Single chum Intimacy Affection and
respect from
peers
Early 13 to 15 Several chums Intimacy and lust toward Balance of lust,
adolescence different persons intimacy and
security
operations
Late 15 ---- Lover Fusion of intimacy and Discovery of self
adolescence lust. and the world
outside of self.
  Psychological Disorder

Sullivan believed that all psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and can be
understood only with reference to the patient’s social environment. He also held that the deficiencies
found in the psychiatric patients are found in every person, but to a lesser degree. There is nothing
unique about psychological difficulties; they are derived from the same kind of interpersonal troubles
faced by all people. Sullivan insisted that “everyone is much more simply human than unique, and that no
matter what ails the patient, he is mostly a person like the psychiatrist”.

 Psychotherapy

Sullivan based his therapeutic procedures on an effort to improve a patient’s relationship with
others. To facilitate this process, the therapist serves as a participant observer, becoming part of an
interpersonal, face-to-face relationship with the patient and providing the patient an opportunity to
establish syntaxic communication with another human being.

 Related Research

Sullivan’s interpersonal theory of personality rests on the assumption that unhealthy personality
development results from interpersonal conflicts and difficulties. Sullivan particularly emphasized the
importance of same-sex friends and used the term “chums” to describe this specific category of peers. In
this section we review some recent research on the dynamics of same-sex friendships in childhood and
how they can be simultaneously helpful and harmful for healthy development depending on certain
factors.

 The Pros and Cons of “Chums” for Girls and Boys

Harry Stack Sullivan, like countless other psychologists, considered friends during childhood
and adolescence to be crucial to developing into a healthy adult. Friends are a source of social support,
and it is comforting to lean on them when times are tough or when you’re having a bad day. Friends may
be particularly important during childhood because children do not have the same advanced coping
mechanisms that adults have and sometimes struggle to deal with issues like being rejected by a peer. In
situations like these it is important to have a friend, or a “chum” to use Sullivan’s language, to talk to. But
recently, psychologists have begun investigating the potentially harmful aspects of social support in
childhood. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that having friends can be a bad thing, but sometimes
the dynamics of a particular friendship can actually be damaging.

 Imaginary Friends

More than any other personality theorist, Sullivan recognized the importance of having an
imaginary friend, especially during the childhood stage. He believed that these friendships can facilitate
independence from parents and help children build real relationships. In support of Sullivan’s notion,
research has found that children do tend to view imaginary friends as a source of nurturance. Moreover,
evidence supports Sullivan’s theory that children who develop imaginary friends—in contrast to those who
do not—are more creative, imaginary, intelligent, friendly, and sociable. In summary, research tends to
support Sullivan’s assumptions that having an imaginary playmate is a normal, healthy experience It is
neither a sign of pathology nor a result of feelings of loneliness and alienation from other children. Indeed,
imaginary friends not only may serve as a source of enjoyment but also may have the more important
purpose of modeling for children what a truly good, mutually enjoy- able friendship should be so that they
can avoid bad relationships as they grow and mature into healthy adults.

Habel, Kyle Joyce B.

Bs Psychology

3127 Psy 123 (7-8am)