INTERPERSONAL THEORYHarry Stack Sullivan’s

Biography: Harry Stack Sullivan

• He was born in the small farming town of Norwich, New York on February 21, 1892.

• He is a sole surviving child of poor Irish Catholic parents.

• His mother, Ella, was 32 when she married Timothy, and 39 when Harry was born.

• He was pampered and protected by his mother as an only child.

• He has never developed a close relationship with his father until after his mother’s death and he became a prominent physician.

• When he was 8 ½ years old, he formed a close friendship with a 13-year-old boy from a neighboring farm.

• That “chum” was Clarence Bellinger.

• Both of them were socially retarded but intellectually advanced, became psychiatrists and has never married.

• Six years after becoming a physician and with no training in psychiatry, he gained a position at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. as a psychiatrist.

• His ability to work with schizophrenic patients won him a reputation as a therapeutic wizard.

• He died alone in Paris, France on January 14, 1949 at the age of 56.

Tensions

Sullivan saw 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.

2 Types of Tension

1. Needs

- can relate either to the general well-being of a person or to specific zones (e.g. 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.

2. Anxiety

- is disjunctive and calls for no consistent actions for its relief. Sullivan cited anxiety as the chief disruptive force in healthy interpersonal relations while he called a complete absence of anxiety and other tensions a euphoria.

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

- is the disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred. It is 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

- is the conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal relationship between two people of equal status. Intimacy facilitates interpersonal development while decreasing both anxiety and loneliness.

C. Lust

- is an isolating dynamism. It 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- is the most inclusive of all dynamisms 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.

Personifications

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- 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 love and nurture them. Later, infants acquire a good-mother personification as they become mature enough to recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of their mothering one.

B. “Me” Personifications

- is acquired during infancy, and has three "me" personifications: (1) the bad-me, which grows from experiences of punishment and disapproval, (2) the good-me, who results from experiences with reward and approval, and (3) the not-me, which allows a person to dissociate or selectively inattend the experiences related to anxiety.

C. Eidetic Personifications

- is based on one of Sullivan's most interesting observations wherein people often create imaginary traits that they project onto others. Included in these personifications are the imaginary playmates that preschool-aged children often have which enable them to have a safe and secure relationship with another person, though only imaginary.

Levels of Cognition

Sullivan recognized and divided cognition into three levels or modes of experience. Levels of cognition refer to ways of perceiving, imagining and conceiving.

Prototaxic Level

It includes experiences that are impossible to put into words or communicate to others. Newborn infants experience images mostly on a prototaxic level, but adults, too, frequently have preverbal experiences for a moment that are incapable of being communicated.

Parataxic Level

It includes experiences that are pre-logical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others. Included in these are erroneous assumptions about cause and effect, which Sullivan termed parataxic distortions.

Syntaxic Level

This involves experiences that can be accurately communicated to others. 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.

Developmental Epochs

Sullivan 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.

Infancy (Age birth to 1 year)This is the period from birth until the

emergence of syntaxic language. 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.

Childhood (Ages 1 to 5)

This is the stage that lasts from the beginning of syntaxic language until the need for playmates of equal status. The child's primary interpersonal relationship continues to be with the mother, who is now differentiated from other persons who nurture the child.

Juvenile Era (Ages 6 to 8)

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.

Preadolescence (Ages 9 to 12)It is the most crucial stage among all of

Sullivan’s developmental epochs. 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.

Early Adolescence (Ages 13 to 17)Development during this stage is ordinarily

marked by a coexistence of intimacy with a single friend of the same gender and sexual interest in many persons of the opposite gender. However, if children have no pre-existing capacity for intimacy, they may confuse lust with love and develop sexual relationships that are devoid of true intimacy.

Late Adolescence (Ages 18 to 22 or 23)

Chronologically, late adolescence may start at any time after about the age of 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.

Adulthood (Ages 23 and on)

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.

Implication to Social Work

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

Interpersonal theory promotes a more dynamic working relationship between the worker and the client and enhances the latter’s interpersonal skills.

Sullivan gave emphasis and importance in the participation of the worker in the whole intervention process, thus, making his theory one of the most effective framework used in the Problem-Solving method of the Social Work profession.

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