• Harry Stack Sullivan was trained under Adolf Meyer at a time of profound Freudian influence on American Psychiatry.



• Sullivan based his theories upon his own observations and evolved at type of "Interpersonal therapy" in which the 'human relationship' could reach the most disturbed patients. There is little resemblance to the current form of "Interpersonal Therapy".

The Nature of Interpersonal Relationships

• Sullivan described the concept of "Dynamisms" which were behavioral changes occurring as "energic transformations" under natural (non-telic) processes. According to Sullivan, 'Dynamisms' were oriented to gratify bio-psycho-social needs and were integrated into the self as well as influence the development of personality.



• Sullivan also described the process of "Personification". He claimed the basic posture of human behaviour is to make everything more 'person-like'.



• Thus, he observed, interpersonal relations are characterized by the nature of individual's personifications and dynamisms that dictate the nature on interpersonal interaction.



• Dynamisms and Personifications were observed to be either Harmonious or 'Conjunctive' or Dysfunctional or Disjunctive. He postulated that difficulties emerge when disjunctive interpersonal interactions are dissociated (as a defensive process) by "selective inattention" and are therefore not integrated into self system. Sullivan saw humans as move through life acquiring dynamisms as "me-you" interactions through epochs e.g. "chums" as a school age child. He saw that individuals only tend to allow one pattern of behaviour in relationships that may be persistently disjunctive creating the "dynamism of difficulty". Ultimately, symptoms form as dissociated material increases.

Language and Human Development

Sullivan saw three modes of experience:

1. "Prototaxic" - in which an infantile preverbal form of communication, rooted firmly in primary process thought is associated with primitive early personifications. The thought and language disorder seen in schizophrenia is seen to be produced by an arrest at this stage.



2. "Parataxic" - heralded by the emergence of language and symbolic capacity. At this time symbols and language that evoke, rather than carry meaning are used. There is a lack of 'consensual validation'. Persistence of this mode of language is seen as leading to "parataxic language distortions" that help create ongoing disjunctive interpersonal relations.



3. "Syntaxic"- in adult life in which symbols and signs are "consensually validated".