Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory

Summary Outline

I. Overview of Sullivan's Interpersonal Theory

Although Sullivan had a lonely and isolated childhood, he 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.
Sullivan's principal contribution to personality theory was his
conception of developmental stages.
II. Biography of Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan, the first American to develop a
comprehensive personality theory, was born in a small farming
community in upper New York State in 1892. A socially immature
and isolated child, Sullivan nevertheless formed one close
interpersonal relationship with a boy 5 years older than himself. In
his interpersonal theory, Sullivan believed that such a relationship
has the power to transform an immature preadolescent into a
psychologically healthy individual.

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 After an unhappy public school experience, Sullivan enrolled in
medical school and eventually became a physician. Six years after
receiving his medical diploma and with no training in psychiatry,
Sullivan gained a position at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington,
DC, as a psychiatrist. There, his ability to work with schizophrenic
patients won for him a reputation as a therapeutic wizard. However,
despite achieving much respect from an influential group of
associates, Sullivan had few close interpersonal relations with any
of his peers. In 1949, at age 56, he died while alone in a hotel room
in Paris.
III. 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.
A. Needs
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.
B. Anxiety

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 Unlike needs—which 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.
IV. 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.
A. Malevolence
The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred is called malevolence,
defined by Sullivan 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.
B. Intimacy
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.

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 C. Lust
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.
D. Self-System
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 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.
V. Personifications

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Sullivan believed that people acquire certain images of self and
others throughout the developmental stages, and he referred to these
subjective perceptions as personifications.
A. 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.
B. 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.
C. Eidetic Personifications

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 One of Sullivan's 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.
VI. Levels of Cognition
Sullivan recognized three levels of cognition, or ways of perceiving
things—prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic.
A. 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.
B. 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.
C. Syntaxic Level

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 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.
VII. Stages of Development
Sullivan saw interpersonal development as taking place over seven
stages, from infancy to mature adulthood. Personality changes are
most likely during transitions between stages.
A. Infancy
The period from birth until the emergence of syntaxic language is
called infancy, a time when the child receives tenderness from the
mothering one while also learning anxiety through an empathic
linkage with the mother. Anxiety may increase to the point of terror,
but such terror is controlled by the built-in protections of apathy
and somnolent detachment that allow the baby to go to sleep.
During infancy children use autistic language, which takes place
on a prototaxic or parataxic level.
B. Childhood
The stage that lasts from the beginning of syntaxic language until
the need for playmates of equal status is called childhood. The
child's primary interpersonal relationship continues to be with the

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mother, who is now differentiated from other persons who nurture
the child.
C. Juvenile Era
The juvenile stage begins with the need for peers of equal status and
continues until the child develops a need for an intimate relationship
with a chum. At this time children should learn how to compete, to
compromise, and to cooperate. These three abilities, as well as an
orientation toward living, help a child develop intimacy, the chief
dynamism of the next developmental stage.
D. Preadolescence
Perhaps the most crucial stage is preadolescence, because mistakes
made earlier can be corrected during preadolescence, but errors
made during preadolescence are nearly impossible to overcome in
later life. Preadolescence spans the time from the need for a single
best friend until puberty. Children who do not learn intimacy
during preadolescence have added difficulties relating to potential
sexual partners during later stages.
E. Early Adolescence
With puberty comes the lust dynamism and the beginning of early
adolescence. Development during this stage is ordinarily marked
by a coexistence of intimacy with a single friend of the same gender

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 and sexual interest in many persons of the opposite gender.
However, if children have no preexisting capacity for intimacy, they
may confuse lust with love and develop sexual relationships that are
devoid of true intimacy.
F. Late Adolescence
Chronologically, late adolescence may start at any time after about
age 16, but psychologically, it begins when a person is able to feel
both intimacy and lust toward the same person. Late adolescence is
characterized by a stable pattern of sexual activity and the growth
of the syntaxic mode, as young people learn how to live in the adult
world.
G. Adulthood
Late adolescence flows into adulthood, a time when a person
establishes a stable relationship with a significant other person and
develops a consistent pattern of viewing the world.
VIII. Psychological Disorders
Sullivan believed that disordered behavior has an interpersonal
origin and can only be understood with reference to a person's
social environment.
IX. Psychotherapy

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 Sullivan pioneered the notion of the therapist as a participant
observer, who 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.

X. Related Research
In recent years, a number of researchers have studied the impact on
children of “chums,” and of imaginary friends.
A. The Pros and Cons of “Chums” for Girls and Boys
Amanda Rose and colleagues conducted a longitudinal study of co-
rumination in childhood relationships. They found that co-
rumination is associated with better friendships for both boys and
girls, and also that co-rumination is associated with more depression
or anxiety for girls, but not for (Rose, Carlson, & Waller, 2007).
B. Imaginary friends
There is evidence to support Sullivan’s theory that children who
develop imaginary friends tend to have higher levels of creativity,
imagination, and intelligence (Fern, 1991; Gleason, 2002). Tracy
Gleason and Lisa Hohmann (2006) have also found support for
Sullivan’s idea that children view imaginary friends as a source of

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 nurturance, support and enjoyment, and that they help to model how
real friendships should work (Gleason, 2002; Gleason & Hohmann,
2006). They found in addition that children’s relationships with
imaginary friends closely resembled real reciprocal friendships. The
authors concluded that having an imaginary friend is a normal,
healthy experience, just as Sullivan believed.
XI. Critique of Sullivan
Despite Sullivan's insights into the importance of interpersonal
relations, his theory of personality and his approach to
psychotherapy have lost popularity in recent years. In summary, his
theory rates very low in falsifiability, low in its ability to generate
research, and average in its capacity to organize knowledge and to
guide action. In addition, it is only average in self-consistency and
low in parsimony.
XII. Concept of Humanity
Because Sullivan saw human personality as largely being formed
from interpersonal relations, his theory rates very high on social
influences and very low on biological ones. In addition, it rates
high on unconscious determinants; average on free choice,
optimism, and causality; and low on uniqueness.

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