Lester Hawkins
SULLIVAN'S INTERPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Starting with the empirical methods and insights of Amer–
ican pragmatism, Harry Stack Sullivan has formulated an
interper–
sonal
psychology which studies the human being directly in the context
of
his
present relations. According to Sullivan our health or our illness
lies in the manner of our communication of ourselves to significant
others. Our personalities can never be isolated from the complex of
these interpersonal situations in which we have our being, and the
cure of our approach to others is the cure of ourselves.
It
becomes
readily apparent that Sullivan's method is a radical shift from psy–
chology as a science of symptoms allied to medicine (presupposing
virtually
a priori
definitions of the nature of instinctual drives) to
the study of the human being as an acting totality in his present
relations and with his present culture.
Sullivan was already known in the late twenties as a brilliant
practitioner with schizophrenics, but, by personal accounts, he had
no patience for writing out
his
theories. Even now, his notions can
be pieced together only from a few scattered articles in
Psychiatry
and a series of brief lectures given in 1946.* It is not surprising that
his
work remains comparatively unknown in intellectual circles though
its effect has been revolutionary among the more advanced analysts.
Here I can only sketch a few of the basic concepts of his complex
system.
To arrive at its formulations, Sullivan's method works a constant
shift from our present relations to the interpersonal conditioning of
our past. In the various interpersonal situations the person has lived
through he has developed a basic self, a self which admits certain
*
These lectures were published as
Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry,
Wash–
ington, 1946. See also articles by other members of the Washington School of
Psychiatry, especially those on schizophrenia.
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