Theories of Personality: Harry Stack Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory

People develop their personality within a social context
Without other people, humans would have no personality
Development rests on the individual’s ability to establish intimacy with another person
Anxiety can interfere with satisfying interpersonal relations
Healthy development entails experiencing intimacy and lust toward another same person

Anxiety, premonitions, drowsiness, hunger, sexual excitement
Not always on a conscious level
Partial distortions of reality
2 Types * Needs * Tensions brought about by a biological imbalance between the person and environment * Episodic * Biological component and interpersonal relations * Zonal Needs: arises from a specific body part * General Needs: overall well being of a person * Tenderness is a basic interpersonal need * Anxiety * Disjunctive, diffuse, and vague, call forth no consistent action for relief * Transferred through empathy * Chief disruptive force blocking the development of healthy interpersonal relations * Prevents people from learning from mistakes * Persisting pursuance of childish wish for security * Ensures people will not learn from experience * Its presence is worse than its absence * Stems from complex interpersonal relations * Vaguely represented in awareness * No positive value * Blocks satisfaction of needs

traits/habitual patterns
Major Classes * Related to specific zones of the body * Mouth, anus, genitals * Those related to tensions * Disjunctive (malevolence) * Isolating (lust) * Conjunctive (intimacy and self-system)
Malevolence * Disjunctive dynamism between evil and hatred * Feeling of living among one’s enemies * 2-3 years, when child is rebuffed, ignored, or punished * Adoption of malevolent attitude for protection * Timidity, mischievousness, cruelty, antisocial behavior
Lust * Assumes an isolating tendency * Auto-erotic behavior * Hinders an intimate relationship * Increases anxiety and decreases self-worth
Intimacy * Emerges in the chumship * Close interpersonal relationship between 2 people of equal status * Equal partnership * Integrating dynamism that draws out loving reactions from people * Decreases loneliness and anxiety * Rewarding experiences most healthy people desire
Self-System * Most complex and inclusive of all dynamisms * Consistent pattern of behavior that maintains people’s interpersonal security by protecting them from anxiety * Principal stumbling block to favorable changes in personality * Security operations
Security Operations * Reduces feelings of anxiety/insecurity * 2 Kinds * Dissociation * Includes impulses, desires, and needs that a person refuses to allow into awareness (dreams) * Repression * Selective Inattention * Refusal to see things that one does not wish to see (conscious)

People’s images of themselves or others
Begins in infancy and continues throughout development * Bad mother - good mother * Me * Eidetic personifications
Bad Mother - Good Mother * Similar to Klein’s Good Breast and Bad Breast
Representations of self and other
Mental images that we acquire during development to help us understand ourselves and the world * A cognitive approach to understand personality
Personifications help maintain emotional equilibrium and reduce anxiety
Separation of good and bad
Me * Bad Me, Good Me, Not Me * Building blocks of self-personification * Bad Me * 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 * Ex. recalling an embarrassing moment * Ex. guilt about a past action * Good Me * 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 * Not Me * 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 or negative emotion

Infancy (0-2 years old) * Significant Other: mother * Interpersonal Process: tenderness * Learnings: good/bad
Childhood (2-6 years old) * Significant Other: parents * Interpersonal Process: imaginary playmates * Learnings: syntaxic language
Juvenile Era (6-8.5 years old) * Significant Other: playmates * Interpersonal Process: living with peers * Learnings: competition, compromise, cooperation
Preadolescence (8-13 years old) * Significant Other: single chum * Interpersonal Process: intimacy * Learnings: affection and respect
Early Adolescence (13-15 years old) * Significant Other: several chums * Interpersonal Process: intimacy and lust * Learnings: balance, security operations
Late Adolescence (15 years old and above) * Significant Other: lover * Interpersonal Process: fusion of intimacy and lust * Learnings: discovery of self and world

All psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and must be understood with reference to social environment
Deficiencies found in psychiatric patients are found in every person to a lesser degree
Psychological difficulties are not unique, but come from same interpersonal difficulties we all face
2 broad classes of schizophrenia: organic and situational

Therapist is a participant observer who established an interpersonal relationship with the patient and provides opportunity for syntaxic communication
Sullivan therapists attempt to help patients develop foresight, discover difficulties in interpersonal relations, and restore their ability to participate in consensually validated experiences