Harry Stack Sullivan was a pioneering American psychiatrist who developed interpersonal psychoanalysis. He believed that personality develops through social interactions and relationships with others. Sullivan observed patients with schizophrenia and developed techniques like "participant observation" and "reality testing" to treat them. He saw anxiety and personality as arising from social and interpersonal experiences rather than internal drives. Sullivan described developmental epochs from infancy to adulthood and how experiences with caregivers, especially the mother, shape one's self-system and ability to interact with others. He is known for concepts like "significant others", "personifications", and viewing personality as a system for managing social anxiety.
Harry Stack Sullivan was a pioneering American psychiatrist who developed interpersonal psychoanalysis. He believed that personality develops through social interactions and relationships with others. Sullivan observed patients with schizophrenia and developed techniques like "participant observation" and "reality testing" to treat them. He saw anxiety and personality as arising from social and interpersonal experiences rather than internal drives. Sullivan described developmental epochs from infancy to adulthood and how experiences with caregivers, especially the mother, shape one's self-system and ability to interact with others. He is known for concepts like "significant others", "personifications", and viewing personality as a system for managing social anxiety.
Harry Stack Sullivan was a pioneering American psychiatrist who developed interpersonal psychoanalysis. He believed that personality develops through social interactions and relationships with others. Sullivan observed patients with schizophrenia and developed techniques like "participant observation" and "reality testing" to treat them. He saw anxiety and personality as arising from social and interpersonal experiences rather than internal drives. Sullivan described developmental epochs from infancy to adulthood and how experiences with caregivers, especially the mother, shape one's self-system and ability to interact with others. He is known for concepts like "significant others", "personifications", and viewing personality as a system for managing social anxiety.
Once Sullivan began his work as a practicing psychiatrist, he quickly showed his extraordinary ability to relate to patients suffering from schizophrenia. His later work involved extending his ideas relating to the development and treatment of schizophrenia to a general theory of personality development. Schizophrenia Sullivan's work with those suffering from the psychosis schizophrenia began with his ability to communicate with these patients. He believed that their mental functions, although disordered, were not beyond treatment. Having been introduced to psychoanalytic techniques by Adolf Meyer, Sullivan began to apply these to his hospitalized, psychotic patients, despite the fact that Sigmund Freud had originally developed the techniques for use only with those suffering from neuroses. Sullivan developed the technique of "participant observation," in which the psychiatrist was not just an observer of the patient's behavior, but became a "significant other" in their life through their interactions. In his sessions with patients, Sullivan also began to employ what later came to be known as "reality testing." Questioning the patient about matters that could be verified, he caused them to see how their own view of reality was distorted. Theory of Personality Development Sullivan's work became the foundation of interpersonal psychoanalysis, a school of psychoanalytic theory and treatment that stresses the detailed exploration of the nuances of patients' patterns of interacting with others. Besides making the first mention of the "significant other" in psychological literature, Sullivan developed the "self system," a configuration of the personality traits developed in childhood, and reinforced by positive affirmation and the "security operations" developed to avoid anxiety and threats to self-esteem. Sullivan further defined this self system as a steering mechanism toward a series of "I-You" interlocking behaviors; that is, what an individual does is meant to elicit a particular reaction. Sullivan called these behaviors "parataxic integrations," and noted that such action-reaction combinations can become rigid and dominate an adult's thinking pattern, limiting his actions and reactions to relating to the world as he sees it, not as it really is. Sullivan saw anxiety as existing only as a result of social interactions. Sullivan described techniques, such as selective inattention and personifications, similar to Freud's defense mechanisms, that provide ways for people to reduce social anxiety. Selective Inattention Sullivan believed that mothers express their anxiety about raising their children in a variety of ways. The child has no understanding or way to deal with this and so feels the anxiety himself. Selective inattention is the child's reaction to this, ignoring or rejecting the anxiety, or any interaction that could produce uncomfortable, anxious feelings in the child. Later as adults, this technique is used to focus our minds away from stressful situations. Through social interactions and our selective attention or inattention, we develop what Sullivan called Personifications of ourselves and others. While defenses can often help reduce anxiety, they can also lead to a misperception of reality. Again, he shifts his focus away from Freud and more toward a cognitive approach to understanding personality. 2
These personifications are mental images that allow us to better understand ourselves and the world. There are three basic ways we see ourselves that Sullivan called the bad-me, the good-me and the not- me. The bad me represents those aspects of the self that are considered negative and are therefore hidden from others and possibly even the self. The anxiety that we feel is often a result of recognition of the bad part of ourselves, such as when we recall an embarrassing moment or experience guilt from a past action.
The good me is everything we like about ourselves. It represents the part of us we share with others and that we often choose to focus on because it produces no anxiety. The final part of us, called the not-me, represents all those things that are so anxiety provoking that we can not even consider them a part of us. Doing so would definitely create anxiety which we spend our lives trying to avoid. The not-me is kept out of awareness by pushing it deep into the unconscious.
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, and (3) the not-me, which allows a person to dissociate or selectively not attend to the experiences related to anxiety. Eidetic Personifications One of Sullivans 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 preschool-aged children often have. These imaginary friends enable children to have a safe, secure relationship with another person, even though that person is imaginary. Developmental epochs Sullivan 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. Sullivans principal contribution to personality theory was his conception of developmental stages. In a similar fashion to Freud, Sullivan maintained that childhood experiences with other people are a large contributor to the adult personality, the mother playing the most significant role. He differed from Freud in his belief that the primary significance of the parent-child relationship was not predominantly sexual, but 3
rather an early quest for security by the child. He also believed that the personality can continue to develop past adolescence and even well into adulthood. Sullivan called these stages "developmental epochs," occurring in a particular order but with their timing determined by our social environment. The majority of Sullivan's focus revolved around the periods of adolescence, and he suggested that many adulthood problems arise from the turmoils of adolescence. The developmental epochs are: Infancy (birth to 1 year) Childhood (1 to 5 years old) Juvenile (6 to 8 years old) Preadolescence (9 to 12 years old) Early Adolescence (13 to 17 years old) Late Adolescence (18 to 22 or 23 years old) Adulthood (23 years old and on)
Sullivan's Developmental Epochs
Infancy Age birth to 1 year 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.
Childhood Ages 1 to 5 The development of speech and improved communication is key in this stage of development.
Juvenile Ages 6 to 8 The main focus as a juvenile is the need for playmates and the beginning of healthy socialization
Preadolescence Ages 9 to 12 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 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.
Late Adolescence Ages 18 to 22 or 23 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 4
previous stages can result in a skewed perception of the self and the world.
Adulthood Ages 23 on 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.
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 o 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 o Unlike needswhich 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 o The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred is called malevolence, defined by Sullivan as a feeling of living among ones enemies. Those children who become malevolent have much difficulty giving and receiving tenderness or being intimate with other people. Intimacy o 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 o 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 o 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 5
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.
Bad-mother, good-mother The bad-mother personifications grows out on 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 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, and (3) the not-me, which allows a person to dissociate or selectively not attend to the experiences related to anxiety. Eidetic personifications One of Sullivans 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 preschool-aged children often have. These imaginary friends enable children to have safe, secure relationship with another person, even though tht person is imaginary. Levels of cognition Sullivan recognized three levels of cognition, or ways of perceiving things prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic. 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. Sysntaxic Level 6
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. Psychological disorders Sullivan believed that disordered behavior has an interpersonal origin and can only be understood with reference to a persons social environment. Psychotherapy Sullivan pioneered the notion of the therapist as a participant observer, which 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.