Harry Stack Sullivan

4.Stages of Development
Sullivan (1953b) postulated seven epochs or stages of development, each crucial to the formation
of human personality. The thread of interpersonal relations runs throughout the stages; other
people are indispensable to a person’s development from infancy to mature adulthood.
Personality change can take place at any time, but it is most likely to occur during the transition
from one stage to the next.
4.1. Infancy
Infancy begins at birth and continues until a child develops articulate or syntaxis speech, usually
at about age 18 to 24 months. An infant becomes human through tenderness received from the
mothering one. The emphatic linkage between mother and infant leads inexorably to the
development of anxiety for the baby and the first anxiety is always associated with the nursing
situation and the oral zone. Then the infant discriminates between the good-nipple and the bad
nipple: the former being associated with relative euphoria in the feeding process; the latter, with
enduring anxiety. During the feeding process, the infant not only receives food but also satisfies
some tenderness needs. The self-system begins to develop during mid-infancy. As we have seen,
this is due primarily to two factors: bodily explorations such as thumb sucking, and the
mothering one’s shift from unconditional tenderness to rewards and punishments that cause the
“good me” and “bad me” personifications to develop.
4.2. Childhood
The age of childhood varies from culture to culture and from individual to individual, but in
Western society it covers the period from about age 18 to 24 months until about age 5 or 6. the
mother remains the most significant other person in this stage. The child differentiates the
various persons who previously formed the concept of the mothering one, separating mother and
father and seeing each as having a distinct role. good and bad now imply social or moral value
and no longer refer to the absence or presence of that painful tension called anxiety. During
childhood, emotions become reciprocal; a child is able to give tenderness as well as receive it.
Since it is preschool-aged children often have one other significant relationship—an imaginary
playmate. This eidetic friend enables children to have a safe, secure relationship that produces
little anxiety. A knowledge of gender also begins to develop, with the boy or girl wishing to be
like the parent of the same sex. To Sullivan, however, such identifications are not due to some
sort of Oedipus complex. 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 remaining
occupied with an activity that has earlier proved useful or rewarding
4.3 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. During the juvenile
stage, Sullivan believed, a child should learn to compete, compromise, and cooperate. The
degree of competition found among children of this age varies with the culture, in the United
States have generally overemphasized competition. Many children believe that they must be
competitive to be successful. Compromise, too, can be overdone. Cooperation includes all those
processes necessary to get along with others. The juvenile-age child must learn to cooperate with
others in the real world of interpersonal relationships. One-to-one relationships are rare, but if
they exist, it would on genuine intimacy. By the end of this stage, a child should have developed
an orientation toward living that makes it easier to consistently handle anxiety, satisfy zonal and
tenderness needs, and set goals based on memory and foresight. This orientation toward living
readies a person for the deeper interpersonal relationships to follow (Sullivan,1953b).
4.4 Preadolescence
Preadolescence, which begins at age 81/2 and ends with adolescence, is a time for intimacy with
one particular person, usually a person of the same gender, takes a genuine interest in the other
person. Sullivan called this process of becoming a social being the “quiet miracle of
preadolescence”. The outstanding characteristic is the capacity to love more than the personal
need satisfaction, intimacy and love become the essence of friendships. Intimacy involves a
relationship in which the two partners consensually validate one another’s personal worth. Love
exists “when the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as is
one’s own satisfaction or security” (Sullivan, 1953a, pp. 42–43). The significant relationships of
this age are typically boy-boy or girl-girl chumships. Each chum becomes more fully human,
acquires an expanded personality, and develops a wider interest in the humanity of all people.
The cooperation they acquired turns to collaboration or the capacity to work with another, not for
self-prestige, but for the well-being of that other. If children do not learn intimacy at this time,
they are likely to be seriously stunted in later personality growth. Even the malevolent attitude
can be reversed, and many other juvenile problems, such as loneliness and self-centeredness, are
diminished by the achievement of intimacy.
4.5 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. The need for
intimacy continues but is now accompanied by a parallel but separate need—lust. Thus,
intimacy, lust, and security often collide with one another, bringing stress and conflict to the
young adolescent in at least three ways. First, lust interferes with security operations. Second,
intimacy also can threaten security, as when young adolescents seek intimate friendships with
other gender. Third, intimacy and lust are frequently in conflict during early adolescence because
powerful genital tensions seek outlet without regard for the intimacy need. Because the lust
dynamism is biological, it bursts forth at puberty regardless of the individual’s interpersonal
readiness for it. Sullivan (1953b) believed that early adolescence is a turning point in personality
development.
4.6 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. The outstanding feature
of late adolescence is the fusion of intimacy and lust. People of the other gender are no longer
desired solely as sex objects but as people who are capable of being loved non selfishly. This
stage is completely determined by interpersonal relations. They begin exchanging ideas with
others and having their opinions and beliefs either validated or repudiated. If previous
developmental epochs were unsuccessful, young people come to late adolescence with no
intimate interpersonal relations, inconsistent patterns of sexual activity, a great need to maintain
security operations. They rely heavily on the parataxic mode to avoid anxiety and strive to
preserve self-esteem through selective inattention, dissociation, and neurotic symptoms.
4.7 Adulthood
A period when people can establish a love relationship with at least one significant other
person.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” (p.
34).Sullivan had little to say about this final stage because he believed that mature adulthood was
beyond the scope of interpersonal psychiatry; people who have achieved the capacity to love are
not in need of psychiatric counsel. Mature adults are perceptive of other people’s anxiety, needs,
and security. They operate predominantly on the syntaxic level, and find life interesting and
exciting (Sullivan, 1953b).
5. Psychopathology
Sullivan believed that all psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and can be
understood only with reference to the patient’s social environment.
Causes
Too much maternal anxiety during infancy, not enough parental tenderness, during childhood,
the failure to find a satisfactory peer group during the juvenile era or a preadolescent chum, or
problems in early adolescence with heterosexual relationships and the lust dynamism damage the
child’s self-esteem and cause the self-system to become extremely rigid. His major clinical
interests concern two of the standard classifications: obsessive-compulsive neurosis and
schizophrenia.
a) Obsessive-compulsive neurosis reflects an extreme vulnerability to anxiety and a
profound loss of self-esteem, caused by never having had outstanding success in one’s
interpersonal relations. Repeated thoughts or actions are (unconsciously) substituted for
behaviors that would evoke intense anxiety, as when an adolescent who has suffered sexual
embarrassments stays at home and obsesses about romantic triumphs instead of risking going out
on a date.
Schizophrenia is caused by the occurrence of uncanny emotions early in life, notably extreme
anxiety, or by disastrous blows to one’s self-esteem during the latter stages of development
(particularly adolescence). Thus sexual impulses and behaviors become associated with the
unconscious not-me personification and are attributed to external sources, producing a gap in this
area of personality that will create serious difficulties during early adolescence. To Sullivan,
therefore, schizophrenia represents a return to an early form of mental functioning in an attempt
to ward off intense anxiety and restore a shattered sense of self-esteem