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Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory
Harry Stack Sullivan was born in the small farming town of Norwich, New York, on February 21, 1892, the sole surviving child of poor Irish Catholic parents.
His interpersonal theory emphasizes the importance of var- ious developmental stages—infancy, childhood, the juvenile era, preadolescence, early adolescence, late adolescence, and adulthood. Healthy human development rests on a person’s ability to establish intimacy with another person, but unfortunately, anxiety can interfere with satisfying interpersonal relations at any age.
Tensions
Sullivan (1953b) saw personality as an energy system. Energy can exist either as tension (potentiality for action) or as actions themselves (energy transformations). Energy transformations transform tensions into either covert or overt behaviors and are aimed at satisfying needs and reducing anxiety. Tension is a potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness. Sullivan recognized two types of tensions: needs and anxiety. Needs usually result in productive actions, whereas anxiety leads to nonproductive or disintegrative behaviors.
1. Needs - Needs are tensions brought on by biological imbalance between a person and the physiochemical environment, both inside and outside the organism. Needs are episodic—once they are satisfied, they temporarily lose their power, but after a time, they are likely to recur. he most basic interpersonal need is tenderness. An infant develops a need to receive tenderness from its primary caretaker (called by Sullivan “the mothering one”). Tenderness is a general need because it is concerned with the overall well- being of a person. General needs, which also include oxygen, food, and water, are opposed to zonal needs, which arise from a particular area of the body.
2. Anxiety - A second type of tension, anxiety, differs from tensions of needs in that it is disjunctive, is more diffuse and vague, and calls forth no consistent actions for its relief. Whereas other tensions result in actions directed specifically toward their relief, anxiety produces behaviors that (1) prevent people from learning from their mistakes, (2) keep people pursuing a childish wish for security, and (3) generally ensure that people will not learn from their experiences.
3. Energy Transformations - Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt or covert, are called energy transformations. This somewhat awkward term simply refers to our behaviors that are aimed at satisfying needs and reducing anxiety—the two great tensions.
Dynamisms
Energy transformations become organized as typical behavior patterns that charac- terize a person throughout a lifetime. Sullivan (1953b) called these behavior patterns dynamisms, a term that means about the same as traits or habit patterns. Dynamisms are of two major classes: first, those related to specific zones of the body, including the mouth, anus, and genitals; and second, those related to tensions. This second class is composed of three categories—the disjunctive, the isolating, and the conjunctive. Disjunctive dynamisms include those destructive patterns of behavior that are related to the concept of malevolence; isolating dynamisms include those behavior patterns (such as lust) that are unrelated to interpersonal relations; and conjunctive dynamisms include beneficial behavior patterns, such as intimacy and the self-system.
1. Malevolence - is the disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred, characterized by the feeling of living among one’s enemies (Sullivan, 1953b). It originates around age 2 or 3 years when children’s actions that earlier had brought about maternal tenderness are rebuffed, ignored, or met with anxiety and pain.
2. Intimacy - Intimacy grows out of the earlier need for tenderness but is more specific and involves a close interpersonal relationship between two people who are more or less of equal status. Intimacy is an integrating dynamism that tends to draw out loving reactions from the other person, thereby decreasing anxiety and loneliness, two extremely painful experiences. Because intimacy helps us avoid anxiety and loneliness, it is a rewarding experience that most healthy people desire (Sullivan, 1953b).
3. Lust - On the other hand, lust is an isolating tendency, requiring no other person for its satisfaction. It manifests itself as autoerotic behavior even when another person is the object of one’s lust. Lust is an especially powerful dynamism during adolescence, at which time it often leads to a reduction of self-esteem.
4. Self-System - The most complex and inclusive of all the dynamisms is the self-system, a consistent pattern of behaviors that maintains people’s interpersonal security by protecting them from anxiety. As the self-system develops, people begin to form a consistent image of them- selves. Thereafter, any interpersonal experiences that they perceive as contrary to their self-regard threatens their security. As a consequence, people attempt to defend themselves against interpersonal tensions by means of security operations, the purpose of which is to reduce feelings of insecurity or anxiety that result from endangered self-esteem. Two important security operations are dissociation and selective inattention. Dissociation includes those impulses, desires, and needs that a person refuses to allow into awareness. The control of focal awareness, called selective inattention, is a refusal to see those things that we do not wish to see.
Personifications
Beginning in infancy and continuing throughout the various developmental stages, people acquire certain images of themselves and others. These images, called per- sonifications, may be relatively accurate, or because they are colored by people’s needs and anxieties, they may be grossly distorted. Sullivan (1953b) described three basic personifications that develop during infancy—the bad-mother, the good- mother, and the me.
1. Bad-Mother, Good-Mother - The bad-mother personification, in fact, grows out of the infant’s experiences with the bad-nipple: that is, the nipple that does not satisfy hunger needs. After the bad-mother personification is formed, an infant will acquire a good- mother personification based on the tender and cooperative behaviors of the mothering one. These two personifications, one based on the infant’s perception of an anxious, malevolent mother and the other based on a calm, tender mother, combine to form a complex personification composed of contrasting qualities projected onto the same person.
2. Me Personifications - During midinfancy a child acquires three me personifications (bad-me, good-me, and not-me) that form the building blocks of the self personification. Each is related to the evolving conception of me or my body. The bad-me personification is fashioned from experiences of punishment and disapproval that infants receive from their mothering one. The resulting anxiety is strong enough to teach infants that they are bad, but it is not so severe as to cause the experience to be dissociated or selectively inattended. The good-me personification results from infants’ experiences with reward and approval. Infants feel good about themselves when they perceive their mother’s expressions of tenderness. Sudden severe anxiety, however, may cause an infant to form the not-me personification and to either dissociate or selectively inattend experiences re- lated to that anxiety. An infant denies these experiences to the me image so that they become part of the not-me personification.
4. Eidetic Personifications - Not all interpersonal relations are with real people; some are eidetic personifications: that is, unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that many children invent in order to protect their self-esteem. Sullivan (1964) believed that these imaginary friends may be as significant to a child’s development as real playmates.
Levels of Cognition
Sullivan divided cognition into three levels or modes of experience: prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic. Levels of cognition refer to ways of perceiving, imagining, and conceiving. Experiences on the prototaxic level are impossible to communicate; parataxic experiences are personal, prelogical, and communicated only in distorted form; and syntaxic cognition is meaningful interpersonal communication.
1. Prototaxic Level - The earliest and most primitive experiences of an infant take place on a prototaxic level.Because these experiences cannot be communicated to others, they are difficult to describe or define. One way to understand the term is to imagine the earliest subjective experiences of a newborn baby. These experiences must, in some way, re- late to different zones of the body. A neonate feels hunger and pain, and these prototaxic experiences result in observable action, for example, sucking or crying. In adults, prototaxic experiences take the form of momentary sensations, im- ages, feelings, moods, and impressions. These primitive images of dream and wak- ing life are dimly perceived or completely unconscious.
2. Parataxic Level - Parataxic experiences are prelogical and usually result when a person assumes a cause-and-effect relationship between two events that occur coincidentally. Parataxic cognitions are more clearly differentiated than prototaxic experiences, but their meaning remains private. Therefore, they can be communicated to others only in a distorted fashion.
3. Syntaxic Level - Experiences that are consensually validated and that can be symbolically communicated take place on a syntaxic level. Sullivan hypothesized that the first instance of syntaxic cognition appears whenever a sound or gesture begins to have the same meaning for parents as it does for a child. The syntaxic level of cognition becomes more prevalent as the child be- gins to develop formal language, but it never completely supplants prototaxic and parataxic cognition.
In summary, Sullivan identified two kinds of experience—tensions and energy transformations. Tensions, or potentiality for action, include needs and anxiety. Whereas needs are helpful or conjunctive when satisfied, anxiety is always disjunc- tive, interfering with the satisfaction of needs and disrupting interpersonal relations. Energy transformations literally involve the transformation of potential energy into actual energy (behavior) for the purpose of satisfying needs or reducing anxiety. Some of these behaviors form consistent patterns of behavior called dynamisms. Sul- livan also recognized three levels of cognition—prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic.
Stages of Development
Sullivan (1953b) postulated seven epochs or stages of development, each crucial to the formation of human personality.
1. Infancy - Infancy begins at birth and continues until a child develops articulate or syntaxic speech, usually at about age 18 to 24 months. Sullivan believed that an infant be- comes human through tenderness received from the mothering one. The satisfaction of nearly every human need demands the cooperation of another person. Infants can- not survive without a mothering one to provide food, shelter, moderate temperature, physical contact, and the cleansing of waste materials.
2. Childhood - The era of childhood begins with the advent of syntaxic language and continues until the appearance of the need for playmates of an equal status. Sullivan (1953b) referred to childhood as a period of rapid acculturation. Be- sides acquiring language, children learn cultural patterns of cleanliness, toilet train- ing, eating habits, and sex-role expectancies. They also learn two other important processes: dramatizations and preoccupations. Dramatizations are attempts to act like or sound like significant authority figures, especially mother and father. Preoccupations are strategies for avoiding anxiety and fear-provoking situations by re- maining occupied with an activity that has earlier proved useful or rewarding.
3. Juvenile Era - The juvenile era begins with the appearance of the need for peers or playmates of equal status and ends when one finds a single chum to satisfy the need for intimacy.
4. Preadolescence - Preadolescence, which begins at age 81/2 and ends with adolescence, is a time for in- timacy with one particular person, usually a person of the same gender. All preced- ing stages have been egocentric, with friendships being formed on the basis of self- interest. A preadolescent, for the first time, takes a genuine interest in the other person. Sullivan (1953a) called this process of becoming a social being the “quiet miracle of preadolescence” (p. 41), a likely reference to the personality transformation he experienced during his own preadolescence.
5. Early Adolescence- Early adolescence begins with puberty and ends with the need for sexual love with one person. It is marked by the eruption of genital interest and the advent of lustful relationships.
6. Late Adolescence - Late adolescence begins when young people are able to feel both lust and intimacy toward the same person, and it ends in adulthood when they establish a lasting love relationship. Late adolescence embraces that period of self-discovery when adolescents are determining their preferences in genital behavior, usually during secondary school years, or about ages 15 to 17 or 18.
7. Adulthood - The successful completion of late adolescence culminates in adulthood, a period when people can establish a love relationship with at least one significant other per- son. Writing of this love relationship, Sullivan (1953b) stated that “this really highly developed intimacy with another is not the principal business of life, but is, perhaps, the principal source of satisfaction in life”
Sullivan believed that all psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and can be understood only with reference to the patient’s social environment. He also held that the deficiencies found in psychiatric patients are found in every person, but to a lesser degree. There is nothing unique about psychological difficulties; they are derived from the same kind of interpersonal troubles faced by all people. Sullivan (1953a) insisted that “everyone is much more simply human than unique, and that no matter what ails the patient, he is mostly a person like the psychiatrist”
Psychotherapy
Because he believed that psychic disorders grow out of interpersonal difficulties, Sullivan based his therapeutic procedures on an effort to improve a patient’s rela- tionship with others. To facilitate this process, the therapist serves as a participant observer, becoming part of an interpersonal, face-to-face relationship with the pa- tient and providing the patient an opportunity to establish syntaxic communication with another human being.
Sullivanian therapy is aimed at uncovering patients’ difficul- ties in relating to others. To accomplish this goal, the therapist helps patients to give up some security in dealing with other people and to realize that they can achieve mental health only through consensually validated personal relations. The therapeutic ingredient in this process is the face-to-face relationship between therapist and patients, which permits patients to reduce anxiety and to communicate with others on the syntaxic level.
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To cite reference:
Feist, Jess & Feist, Gregory J. 2008. Theories of Personality, 7th Edition. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Publish in the United States of America.
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