Sullivan Interpersonal Theory: Respond Efficiently To Different Behavior

Harry Stack Sullivan
1892-1948
SULLIVAN
INTERPERSONAL
THEORY
Respond Efficiently to Different
Behavior
Sullivan’s CORE IDEAS
First American to construct a Comprehensive
Personality Theory
Emphasizes childhood friendships in the formation
of personality
- Chumship, intimacy, & Security
Personality is shaped from our relationships with others
Personality can never be isolated from the complex of interpersonal

relations in which the person lives
- i.e., Personality cannot be separated from our
social worlds
Sullivan’s Background
 Sullivan was born in 1892 in Norwich, New
 York
the son of a poor working man and
farmer
 He grew up isolated, and was a loner
 Obtained his MD at 25 from a small
Chicago medical school, then was a
psychiatrist at a mental hospital in
Maryland
 Viewed as a ―clinical wizard‖ in the
treatment of schizophrenia
 Never Married
 He moved from obscurity to fame in 8
years
Tensions
 potentially for action or actions themselves (i.e., energy
transformations) that may not be experienced in awareness.
 Needs
 Tensions brought on by a biological imbalance between the
person and the physiochemical environment, both inside and
outside the organism.
 Can be physiological or interpersonal
 The most basic interpersonal need is that of

tenderness.
Anxiety
anxiety is disjunctive and calls for no consistent actions for its
relief.
 Anxiety is the chief disruptive
force blocking our development of

good interpersonal relations.
Energy Transformation
Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt
or covert.
Needs to represent an imbalance between biology and the
environment that signal the individual to engage in action.
3 Major Dynamisms
3 Self Personifications
7 Developmental Stages
Abnormality
Concept of Humanity
Anxiety & Energy Transformations

DYNAMISM
 Typical behavior
DYNAMISM
S
patterns that
Disjunctive/malevolent
characterize a person – negative interpersonal
throughout a lifetime. behavior
 The ways in which an Conjunctive/ intimacy
individual typically meets – positive interpersonal
his or her needs or deals behavior
with anxiety
Isolating/ Lust
– unrelated to interpersonal
 wishing evil to others.
 Disjunctive destructive patterns of
behavior related to malevolence.
 Feeling of living among one„s enemies
 Arises around age 2 or 3
 Caused by parental neglect or

rejection
 Conjunctive beneficial patterns of
behavior such as intimacy and the self-
system.
 Grows out of early needs for
tenderness
 Emerges in the “chumship”
 Prepubescent best friend
relationship with a peer of equal
status
 Decreases anxiety and
loneliness
 Isolating patterns of behavior that are
unrelated to interpersonal behavior
(e.g., lust).
 Self-centered needs
 Based largely on sexual

gratification
 Personifications help maintain
 Representations of self and
emotional equilibrium and reduce
other
anxiety
 Separation of the good vs. bad
 Mental images that we acquire
during development to help us Self Personifications
understand ourselves and the
world
The Bad Me
 A cognitive approach to
understanding personality. The Good Me
The Not Me
PERSONIFICATIONS
 grows from experiences of punishment and
disapproval
 Represents those aspects of the self that are
considered negative and hidden from others and
possibly the self.
 Anxiety results from recognition of the bad me
 Recalling an embarrassing
 moment
Guilt about a past action
 results from experiences with reward and
approval
 Experiences associated with
tenderness and intimacy
 Everything we like about ourselves
 The part of us we share with others and prefer to
focus on because it produces no anxiety
 Persona ?
 anxiety provoking experiences that invoke
security operations may become dissociated
from self to form the not-me.
 Security operations = Sullivan„s concept
of defense mechanisms
 Experiences that are denied
 Experiences that are kept out of awareness and
repressed
 Acknowledging not-me experiences creates
high anxiety/ negative emotion.
7 Developmental
Stages  Each stage involves specific
interpersonal challenges or tasks,
Infancy and specific types of interpersonal
Childhood relationships
Juvenile Era
Preadolescence  Personality change is most likely
during the transitions between
Early Adolescence stages
Late Adolescence
 Personality continues to evolve
Adulthood from infancy through adulthood
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
A. Infancy
Tenderness from mothering one
Learns anxiety from the mother through
empathy
B. Childhood
Imaginary playmate (i.e., eidetic
personification)
 Practice social relations/ rehearsal
 Safe, secure relationships to practice with no threat

of negative consequences
C. Juvenile Era
Need for peers of equal status
 Children learn how to compete, compromise, and
cooperate.
F. Late Adolescence
Feel both intimacy and lust toward the
same person
 Learn how to live in the adult world
 Discovery of self
G. Adulthood
Person establishes a stable
relationship with a significant other
person.
 MENTAL DISORDERS
 All mental disorders have an
interpersonal origin and can be
understood only with reference to the
person„s social environment.
 Interpersonal theories emerge in
1980„s and 1990„s
 Psychotherapy
 Promoted Interpersonal Psychotherapy
 Pioneered the notion of the therapist
as a participant observer.
 Originated Group Psychotherapy
ABNORMALITY
 Sullivansaw personality as being largely formed
from interpersonal relations.
 Insisted that humans have no existence outside the interpersonal
situation.
 Theory emphasizes:
 social influences over biological ones;
 Rates high on unconscious determinants,
 average on free choice, optimism, and causality,

 and low on uniqueness
CONCEPT OF HUMANITY

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What was Sullivan's background?

What are Sullivan's core ideas?

Harry Stack Sullivan

Personality can never be isolated from the complex of interpersonal

 The most basic interpersonal need is that of

force blocking our development of

Anxiety & Energy Transformations

 Arises around age 2 or 3

 Caused by parental neglect or

 Based largely on sexual

 Anxiety results from recognition of the bad me

 Safe, secure relationships to practice with no threat

 Rates high on unconscious determinants,

 average on free choice, optimism, and causality,

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