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HARRY STACK SULLIVAN
INTERPERSONAL PSYCHOANALYSIS THEORY
● Born Feb. 21, 1892 ● Oldest existing son of poor Irish Catholic parents ● Lonely childhood existence ● Poor relationship with father ● Close friendship with Clarence Bellinger ● Academically gifted ● Poor academic performance in freshman year at Cornell ● Suffered a schizophrenic breakdown ● Enrolled for Medicine, received degree 2 years after graduation ● Work with William Alanson White ● His therapy was neither psychoanalytic nor neo-Freudian ● Died of Cerebral Hemorrhage on Jan. 14, 1949 ● Rumors of homosexuality HARRY STACK SULLIVAN OVERVIEW ● People develop their personality within a social context ● Without other people, humans would have no personality ● Development rests on the individual’s ability to establish intimacy with another person ● Healthy development entails experiencing intimacy and lust toward another same person ● Anxiety can interfere with satisfying interpersonal relations
OVERVIEW PERSONALITY
● Primarily the result of the relationships people have with one another ● Tension – either actual actions (system of energy) or the potential for actions (energy transformations) TENSION ● Anxiety, premonitions, drowsiness, hunger, sexual excitement ● Not always on a conscious level ● Partial distortions of reality Two Types: ● Needs ● Anxiety NEEDS ● Episodic ● Tensions brought about by a biological imbalance between the person and environment ● Biological component and interpersonal relations ● Zonal Needs – arises from a specific body part ● General Needs – overall well-being of a person ● Tenderness is a basic interpersonal need ● To reduce needs, a certain action is required ANXIETY ● Main force of disruption for interpersonal relationships
MALEVOLENCE
● Disjunctive dynamism between evil and hatred ● Feeling of living among one’s enemies ● When child is rebuffed, ignored, or punished (2-3 years old) ● Adoption of malevolent attitude for protection ● Timidity, Mischievousness, Cruelty, anti-social behavior LUST ● Self-centered desire ● Hinders an intimate relationship ● Assumes an isolating tendency ● Auto-erotic behavior ● Increases anxiety and decreases self-worth ● Does not necessarily require another individual for the need to be satisfied INTIMACY ● Close interpersonal relationship between 2 people of equal status ● Equal partnership ● Integrating dynamism that draws out loving reactions from people ● Decreases loneliness and anxiety ● Rewarding experiences most healthy people desire SELF-SYSTEM ● Maintain individual’s interpersonal security ● Commonly suppress any change in personality
● Most complex and inclusive of all dynamisms ● Made up of all the security operations by which an individual defends the self against anxiety and ensures self-esteem PERSONIFICATIONS ● A group of feelings, attitudes, and thoughts that have arisen out of one’s interpersonal experiences ● Seldom accurate; nevertheless, ● Persist and are influential in shaping our attitudes and actions towards others ● Also, basis of “stereotypes,” on a group level BAD MOTHER - GOOD MOTHER ● Develop out of satisfying or anxiety-producing experiences with the child’s mother BAD - ME ● Aspects of one’s self that are hidden from the rest of the world, and possibly one’s self ● Considered to be negative ● When anxiety is experienced, because bad-me is being recognized by the consciousness GOOD - ME ● Everything that an individual enjoys about him or herself ● Does not create anxiety, shared with other people ● What an individual will choose to focus on NOT - ME ● All of the things that create such anxiety ● Actually, pushed into unconsciousness so as to be kept out of our awareness
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
Stage Age Significant Other Interpersonal Process Learnings Infancy 0–2 Mother Tenderness Good / Bad Childhood 2–6 Parents Imaginary Playmates Syntaxic Language Juvenile Era 6–8.5 Playmates Living with Peers Competition, Compromise, Cooperation Preadolescen ce 8.5 Single Chum Intimacy Affection & Respect Early Adolescence 13 Several Chums Intimacy and Lust Balance, Security Operations Late Adolescence 15– Lover Fusion of Intimacy and Lust Discovery of self & world Adulthood 16 and above Stable relationship — Constant pattern of viewing the world
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
● All psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and must be understood with reference to social environment ● Deficiencies found in psychiatric patients are found in every person to a lesser degree ● Psychological difficulties are not unique, but come from same interpersonal difficulties we all face Two broad classes of schizophrenia: ● Organic ● Situational PSYCHOTHERAPY ● Therapist is a participant observer who establishes an interpersonal relationship with the patient and provides opportunity for syntaxic communication ● Sullivanian therapists attempt to help patients develop foresight, discover difficulties in interpersonal relations, and restore their ability to participate in consensually validated experiences
