1. Harry Stack Sullivan
1892-1948
SULLIVAN
INTERPERSONAL
THEORY
Respond Efficiently to Different
Behavior

2. 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

3. Sullivan’s Background
 Sullivan was born in 1892 in Norwich, New
 York son of a poor working man and
the
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

5. 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.

6. 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.

8. Energy Transformation
Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt
or  Needs to represent an imbalance between biology and the
covert.
environment that signal the individual to engage in action.

9. 3 Major Dynamisms
3 Self Personifications
7 Developmental Stages
Abnormality
Concept of Humanity
Anxiety & Energy Transformations

10. DYNAMISM
 Typical
behavior
patterns that
characterize a person
throughout a lifetime.

The ways in which an
individual typically meets
his or her needs or deals
with anxiety
DYNAMISM
S
Disjunctive/malevolent
– negative interpersonal
behavior
Conjunctive/ intimacy
– positive interpersonal
behavior
Isolating/ Lust
– unrelated to interpersonal

11. 
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

12. 
Conjunctive beneficial patterns of
behavior such as intimacy and the selfsystem.


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

13. 
Isolating patterns of behavior that are
unrelated to interpersonal behavior
(e.g., lust).

Self-centered needs

Based largely on sexual
gratification

14. 

Representations of self and
other

Mental images that we acquire
during development to help us
understand ourselves and the
world
Personifications help maintain
emotional equilibrium and reduce
anxiety
 Separation of the good vs. bad
Self Personifications
The Bad Me

A cognitive approach to
understanding personality.
The Good Me
The Not Me
PERSONIFICATIONS

15. 
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 a past action
Guilt about

16. 


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 ?

17. 
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.

18. 7 Developmental
Stages

Each stage involves specific
interpersonal challenges or tasks,
and specific types of interpersonal
relationships

Personality change is most likely
during the transitions between
stages

Personality continues to evolve
from infancy through adulthood
Infancy
Childhood
Juvenile Era
Preadolescence
Early Adolescence
Late Adolescence
Adulthood
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

19. A. Infancy
Tenderness from mothering one
Learns anxiety from the mother through
empathy
B. Childhood
Imaginary playmate (i.e., eidetic
 Practice social
personification) 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.

20. 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.

21.  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

22.  Sullivan
saw 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