Harry Stack Sullivan’s (1892 – 1949) Interpersonal Theory - Most basic interpersonal

need
 Brief Information - Requires action from at least
Name: Harry Stack Sullivan 2 people
Place of birth: Norwich, New York - Infant: to receive
Date of birth: February 21, 1892 - Mothering one: to give
Religion: Catholic ii. Physiological Needs (e.g. oxygen,
Occupation: American Psychiatrist food, etc.)
Mother’s name: Ella Stack Sullivan b) Zonal Needs (oral, genital, manual)
Father’s name: Timothy Sullivan
Date of Death: January 14, 1949 2. Anxiety
Cause of death: heart attack/cerebral hemorrhage - Disjunctive, vague and calls forth no consistent
actions for its relief
 Some Events - Chief disruptive force blocking the
 His mother protected him after the death of two development of healthy interpersonal relations
other sons. - Transferred from the mothering one to the
 His father was a shy and withdrawn farm infant through empathy
laborer/factory worker who did not speak to him - Signs of anxiety may cause the mother to
until his mother died and he became a physician. misunderstand it as needs
 On Harry’s 3rd birthday, her mother mysteriously - Prevent people from learning from their
went missing from home. mistakes
 Sullivan had a lonely and isolated childhood. - Keeps people pursuing childish wish for
 At 8 ½ years old, he formed a close friendship to a security
13-year-old boy named Clarence Bellinger.
 He graduated high school at age 16. B. Energy Transformations
 Undergraduate: Cornell University - Tensions that are transformed into overt or covert
actions
 Medicine Degree: Chicago College of Medicine and
- Behaviors that are aimed at satisfying needs and
Surgery
reducing anxiety
 Medical officer during and after World War I.
 St. Elizabeth Hospital: worked with a large number
C. Dynamisms
of patients with schizophrenia
- Key concept in Sullivan’s overall personality theory
 Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital: He was called
- Typical behavior patterns that are organized from
the “clinical wizard”
energy transformations
 James Inscoe: remained with Sullivan for 22 years; - Smallest unity of study in interpersonal
his last name was changed to Sullivan and was relationships
treated like his own son. - Pattern of behavior that endures and recurs, as
such it may be equated to habit
 Basic Tenet - 2 classes:
It emphasized the importance of interpersonal  Related to the body (e.g. mouth, anus, genitals)
relations; Personality is shaped almost entirely by
 Related to tensions (disjunctive, isolating,
the relationships we have with other people.
conjunctive)
 Sullivan’s Theory of Personality 1. Malevolence
> Sullivan saw personality as an energy system < - Disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred
A. Tensions - Feeling of living among one’s enemies
- Potential for action - Take the form of timidity,
- May or may not be experienced in awareness mischievousness, cruelty of other kinds of
asocial/antisocial behavior
1. Needs - Trust is affected in latter stages of not
- Tensions brought on by biological imbalance resolved
both inside and outside the organism - “Once upon a time everything was lovely,
- Episodic in nature: when satisfied, it will but that was before I had to deal with
temporarily lose its power then recur after people”
some time 2. Lust
a) General Needs - Isolating tendency
i. Interpersonal Needs - Immediate goal: genital sexual activity
 Tenderness
 - Requiring no other person for its
satisfaction
- Manifests itself as autoerotic behavior
even when another person is the object of
it
- Powerful during adolescence
- Reduction of self-esteem
- Hinders intimate relationships
3. Conjunctive
- Positive and conjunctive dynamism
- Grows out of the earlier need for
tenderness
- Involves a close relationship between two
people who are more or less of equal
status
- Must not be confused with sexual interest
- Integrating dynamism that tends to draw
out loving reactions from the other person
- Rewarding experience that most health
people desire
Self-System
- Most complex and inclusive of all
dynamisms
- Consistent pattern of behaviors that
maintains people’s interpersonal security
by protecting them from anxiety
- Develops at about 12 – 18 months of age
- (+): serves as a signal, alerting people to
increasing anxiety and giving them an
opportunity to protect themselves
- (-): resistant to change and prevent people
from profiting from anxiety-filled
experiences
- People form a consistent image of
themselves
 Security Operations
- To reduce feelings of insecurity or
anxiety that result from endangered
self-esteem
a) Dissociation
- Impulses, desires and needs that
a person refuses to allow into
awareness
b) Selective Inattention
- Control of focal awareness and
refusal to see those things that
we do not wish to see
D. Personifications
- Images that one has of himself or of another
- Complex web of feelings, attitudes and conceptions
that grows out of experiences with need
satisfaction and anxiety
- May be relatively accurate or distorted depending
on our needs and anxieties
 Stereotypes
- Personifications shared by a number of people
- Consensually validated conceptions that are
widely accepted by members of society handed
down from generation to generation
1. Good-mother; bad-mother personifications
a) Good-mother
- Tender and cooperative behaviors of the
mothering one
b) Bad-mother
- Infant’s personification of not being fed
- Nipple that does not satisfy hunger of the
infant
c) Overprotective mother
- Stems from the mother’s anxiety
2. Me personifications
a) Bad-me personification
- Punishment and disapproval
- Negative aspects of the self
- Hidden from others and possibly from the
self
b) Good-me personification
- Reward and approval
- Mother’s expression and approval
- Everything that we like about ourselves
c) Not-me personification
- Caused by sudden severe anxiety
- So anxiety-provoking, we cannot even
consider them to be a part of us
- Adults: dreams, schizophrenic episodes
and other dissociative reactions
Personified self – single, integrated self-image
3. Eidetic personifications
- Unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that
many children invent in order to protect their
self-esteem
- Adults: see fictional traits in others
- Hinder communication and prevent people
from functioning on the same level of cognition
E. Levels of Cognition
1. Prototaxic level
- Impossible to communicate
- Earliest and most primitive experience of an
infant
- Beyond conscious recall
- “stream of consciousness”
2. Parataxic level
- Usually results when a person assumes a
cause-and-effect relationship between two
events that occur coincidentally
- Prelogical and personal experiences that are
communicated in distorted form
3. Syntaxic level
- Meaningful interpersonal communication
- Consensually validated experiences and can be
symbolically communicated
- Formal language
 Stages of Development
STAGE AGE SIGNIFICANT INTERPERSONAL PROCESS IMPORTANT LEARNINGS
OTHERS
Infancy 0–2 Mothering one Tenderness Good/Bad
Childhood 2–6 Parents Imaginary playmates Synataxic language
Juvenile Era 6–8½ Playmates of equal Living with peers Competition, compromise,
status cooperation
Preadolescence 8 ½ – 13 Single chum Intimacy Affection and respect from peers
Early Adolescence 13 – 15 Several chums Intimacy and lust toward Balance of lust, intimacy and
different persons security operations
Late Adolescence 15 – Lover Fusion of intimacy and lust Discovery of self and world

1. Infancy  Compromise – giving in, when overdone, will

- Birth until when the child develops
articulate/syntaxic speech
- First anxiety: nursing situation and the oral zone
- Oral zone: primary zone of interaction between the
baby and its environment
- Apathy and somnolent detachment: built-in
protections to keep the baby from dying
- Autistic language: private language that makes no
sense to other people
2. Childhood
- Period of acculturation (how to act)
- Personifications of the mother are fused into one as
well as me-personifications (single self-dynamism)
- Labelling good or bad is now because of social or
moral value and not anymore based on the anxiety
of the child
- Mother-child relationship becomes personal
- 2 important processes:
a) Dramatizations – attempts to act like authority
figures
b) Preoccupations – remain occupied with an
activity that has earlier proved useful or
rewarding
 Imaginary friends
- Eidetic friend
- Enables children to have a safe, secure
relationship that produces little anxiety
- Sign of a positive event that helps children
become ready for intimacy with real friends
during the preadolescence stage
 During preschool years:
- Malevolent attitude
- Evolved self-dynamism to handle anxiety
better]the self-system introduces much
stability that it makes future changes very
difficult
3. Juvenile Era
- Playmates are of equal status
- Able to make discriminations
- Learnings:
 Competition – to be successful
(overemphasized)
handicap the child in the socialization process
 Cooperation – critical step to becoming
socialized
- Orientation toward living: readies a person for
deeper interpersonal relationships to follow
4. Preadolescence
- Personality transformation because of taking interst
in another person
- “genesis of the capacity to love”
- Intimacy and love: essence of friendship
- Most untroubled and carefree time of life
- Characterized with unselfish love not yet
contaminated by lust
- Most crucial stage of development
- Chums: able to express self without fear of
humiliation
- Intimacy: relationship between two partners
consensually validating one another’s personal
worth
- Love: exists when the satisfaction/security of
another person becomes a significant to one as in
one’s own satisfaction/security
5. Early Adolescence
- Marked by the eruption of genital interest and the
advent of lustful relationships
- Conflict of intimacy, lust and security operations
 Lust vs security operations: genital activity =
anxiety, guilt and embarrassment
 Intimacy vs security operations: self-doubt,
uncertainty and ridicule (low self-esteem, high
anxiety)
 Intimacy vs lust: powerful genital tensions seek
outlet without regard for intimacy needs
- Lust dynamism: biological
- Turning point in personality development
6. Late Adolescence
- Period of self-discovery
- People of the other gender are viewed as people
who are capable of being loved nonselfishly
- Includes a growing syntaxic mode
- Begin exchanging ideas with others and having their
opinions and beliefs either validated or repudiated
 - Only the mature person has the capacity to love;
others merely go through the motions of being “in
love” in order to maintain security
7. Adulthood
- A period when people can establish a love
relationship with at least one significant person
- Developed intimacy: principal source of satisfaction
in life
- Beyond the scope of interpersonal psychiatry
- Characteristics of people in this stage:
 Operate predominantly on the syntaxic level
 Find life interesting and exciting
 Psychiatric interview
 Psychiatry
- The study of processes involve or go on between
people
- The field of interpersonal relations, under any and
all circumstances in which relations exist
 Interview – interpersonal, face-to-face situation that
takes place between patient and therapist
 Interviewer’s role
- Participant observer
- Helps patients give up some security in dealing with
other people and to realize that they can achieve
mental health only through consensually validated
personal relations
- Communicate on the syntaxic level to reduce
anxiety
- Avoid getting involved with patients
- Convince patients of expert abilities
 Critique
Strengths:
- Asserted the importance of society and interaction
on personality
- Emphasized the concept of the self
- Focused on the interpersonal rather than
psychosexual
Weaknesses:
- Intense concern for working for a world free of
tensions and conflicts
- Concept of self grows out of the “reflected
appraisal” of others
- Merely elaborated Freud’s ego and defenses
 References:
Morgan, J.H. (2014). The Interpersonal Psychotherapy of
Harry Stack Sullivan: Remembering the Legacy. J Psychol
Psychother. 4(6): 162. DOI: 10.4172/2161-0487.1000162
Feist, J. & Feist, G.J. (2008). Theories of Personality (7th ed.).
pp. 212-241. USA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Tria, G.E. & Limpingco, D.A. (2016). Personality (4th ed.). pp.
77-83. Quezon City, PH: Pantas Publishing & Printing
Inc.

 Stages of interview
1. Formal Inception
- Vocal communication between patient and
therapist
- Promotes confidence in the patient by
demonstrating interpersonal skills
- Patient express reasons for seeking therapy
2. Period of Reconnaissance
- Finding out who the patient is
- General personal and social history is
established
- Open-ended questions are asked to invite the
patient to feel free to express the patient’s
emotional state at the time
3. Detailed Inquiry
- Attempt to know which among the formulated
hypotheses during the first two stages is more
substantial
4. Termination Stage
- Interviewer makes an assessment of what
he/she learned and prescribes a course for the
patient to follow including its effects
- Gives he client “homework”