Harry Stack Sullivan

HARRY STACK SULLIVAN (1892-1949)

Interpersonal Theory

            Harry Stack Sullivan is a US psychiatrist who developed a theory of psychiatry based on interpersonal relationships. He believed that anxiety and other psychiatric symptoms arise in fundamental conflicts between the individual and his human environment and that personality development also takes place by a series of interactions with other people. He said that personality is a pure entity, “an illusion,” which cannot be observed or studied apart from interpersonal situations; it is not the person. The organization of personality consists of interpersonal rather than intraphysic events. Personality manifests itself in the person’s behavior in relation to other individuals. People do not need to be present. They may be illusionary or non-existent figures. Perceiving, recalling, thinking, imagining and all other psychological processes are interpersonal in nature.

                Sullivan emphasized that society is the actual creator of people’s personalities. The human being does not exist as a simple personality; its personality can only exist in relation to others. A person’s formative period of development is important to the personality.  If one lives in an unstable environment, his or her  personality will be maladjusted. Life consists of interwoven tensions from the beginning up to the later stage of existence. As a person matures, he or she learns through dynamism to reduce tensions using the self-system, personification and cognitive experiences.

                Dynamism is used by Sullivan to refer to a typical pattern of behavior. It may relate to either to specific zones of the body or to tensions and how it interacts with the environment. Most dynamisms serve the purpose of satisfying the basic needs of the organisms. There are different types of dynamisms: Malevolence, Intimacy,  Lust and Self-System.

                Malevolence is the disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred, defined 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, on the other hand, is the conjunctive dynamism marked by a closed personal relationship between two people of equal status. It facilitates interpersonal development while decreasing both anxiety and loneliness. In contrast to both malevolence and intimacy, lust is an isolating dynamism. It is a self-centered need that can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate interpersonal relationship. Lust is based solely on sexual gratification and requires no other person for its satisfaction. Lastly is the self-system. It is the most  inclusive of all dynamisms is the self-system or the pattern  of behaviors that protects us against anxiety and maintains our interpersonal security. The self-system is a conjunctive dynamism but because its primary purpose is to protect the self from anxiety, it tends to stifle the personality change. One security operation is the dissociation which inlcudes all those experiences that we block from awareness.

                Another concept introduced by Sullivan is personification. One of the structures of personality. He believed that people acquire certain images of self and other throughout the developmental stages. Subjective perceptions are referred to as personifications. There are three categories: Bad-mother, good-mother; Me personifications and eidetic personifications.

                The bad-mother personification grows out of infant’s experiences with a nipple that does not satisfy their hunger needs. Later on, infants acquire a good-mother personification as they become mature enough to recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of the mothering one. Later on, these two personifications combine to form a complex and contrasting image of a real mother.

                The me personification is acquired by children during infancy. There are three types: bad-me which grows from experiences of punishment and disapproval; the good-me results from experiences with reward and approval and the not-me, which allows a person to dissociate the experiences related to anxiety.

                The last type is the eidetic personification which talks about imaginary playmates that the 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.

                Sullivan also recognized three levels of cognition or ways of perceiving things: prototaxic, parataxic and syntaxic. It refers to the experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others. Newborn infants experience images mostly on a prototaxic level. Parataxic level includes experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others. Lastly, syntaxic consists of experiences that can be accurately communicated to others. Children become capable of syntaxic language at about 12-18 months of age when words begin to have the same meaning for them that they do for others.

                He also saw interpersonal Development as taking place over seven stages from infancy to mature adulthood. Personality changes can take place at any time but are more likely to occur during transitions between stages. These are infancy, Childhood, Juvenile era, Preadolescence, Early adolescence, late adolescence and adulthood.

                Sullivan asserted the importance of society and its effect on human development. His personality theory emphasized that interaction is the foundation of personality. From birth to the later stages, one is always in contact with other personalities; the  interaction may take place with a living person or a fictional character and can even operate in dreams and images.