Lecture 16

Recap
Harry Stack Sullivan
Sullivan’s Interpersonal Theory:
• The organization of personality consists of
interpersonal events and interpersonal
behavior.
Sullivan’s Theory Focuses on:
1- Personality as Hypothetical Entity
2- The Personality is a part of an
interpersonal situation and interpersonal
behavior
Example:
• Personality of a University teacher or a
student
• The personality development of a
university teacher or a student is the result
of interpersonal situations or events
• The word interpersonal refers to
relationship between two or more people
or events that take place between people.
Example:
• Child’s relation with family
• Friends or neighbors
 Core Concepts
1- Dynamism
 Core Concepts
• 2- Energy Transformation
– Self System
– Personifications
 Core Concepts
3- Cognitive Process:
Experience occurs in three modes.
These are:
– a- Prototaxic
– b- Parataxic
– c- Syntaxic
 Core Concepts
• 4- The Dynamics of Personality
 Core Concepts
• 5- The Development of Personality
 Core Concepts
6- Research Methods
a- Interview
b- Research on Schizophrenia
 1-Dynamism
• Dynamism is the smallest unit that can be
employed in the study of the individual.
• It is defined as “the pattern of energy
transformations, which characterize the
existence of organism”.
 2-Energy Transformation
• An energy transformation is any form of
behavior.
• It may be overt and public like talking, or
covert and private like thinking and
fantasying.
 2-Personifications
• A personification is an image that an
individual has of him or herself or of
another person.
• It is a complex of feelings, attitudes, and
conceptions that grows out of experiences
with need-satisfaction and anxiety.
 3-Cognitive Process
Sullivan’s unique contribution regarding
the place of cognition in the affairs of
personality is his threefold classification of
experience.
Experience occurs in three mode; these are:
• 1- Prototaxic
• 2- Parataxic
• 3- Syntaxic
 4- The Dynamics Of Personality
• Sullivan, conceives of personality as an
energy system whose chief work consists
of activities that will reduce tension.
 4- The Dynamics Of Personality
a-Tension:
• For Sullivan the organism’s tension
system that can vary between the limits of
absolute relaxation to absolute tension as
exemplified by extreme terror.
 4- The Dynamics Of Personality
a-Tension:
There are two main sources of tension:
• (1) Tensions that arise from the needs of
the organism
• (2) Tensions that result from an anxiety.
 5-The Development of
Personality

• Sullivan spells out the sequence of

interpersonal situations to which the
person is exposed in passing from infancy
to adulthood, and the ways in which these
situations contribute to the formation of
personality.
 5-The Development of
Personality
Stages of Development:
• Sullivan spells six stages in the
development of personality:
– (1) Infancy
– (2) Childhood
– (3) The Juvenile Era
– (4) Preadolescence
– (5) Early Adolescence
– (6) Late Adolescence
 5-The Development of
Personality
• Sullivan spells out the sequence of
interpersonal situations to which the
person is exposed in passing from infancy
to adulthood, and the ways in which these
situations contribute to the formation of
personality.
 6- Research Methods
a- Interview
• Four stages of interview
• Research on Schizophrenia
• Empathy was one of the greatest
personality traits of Sullivan.
• 3-Cognitive Process
• Sullivan’s unique contribution regarding the
place of cognition in the affairs of personality is
his threefold classification of experience.
• Experience, he says, occurs in three modes;
these are
• 1- Prototaxic
• 2-Parataxic
• 3- Syntaxic
 3-Cognitive Process
• 1- Prototaxic Experience:
It “may be regarded as the discrete series of
momentary states of the sensitive organism”.
• This type of experience is similar to the “stream
of consciousness,” the raw sensations, images,
and feelings that flow through the mind of a
being.
• They have no necessary connection” among
themselves and possess no meaning for the
experiencing person.
• The prototaxic mode of experience is
found in its purest form during the early
months of life and is the necessary
precondition for the appearance of the
other two modes.
Example:
• This mode is found in babies and in
psychotics.
2- Parataxic Experience:
• This mode of thinking consists of seeing
causal relationship between events that
occur at about the same time but which
are not logically related

• All superstitions, for instance, are

examples of parataxic thinking.
Example:
• When ever a black cat comes my way I
face disaster, we see causal connections
between experiences that have nothing to
do with one another.
Examples:
• Any misfortune can be the result of the
following reasons:
– Black cats
– Broken mirrors
– Number 13
3- Syntaxic Experience:
• The third and highest mode of thinking is
the syntaxic,
• which consists of consensually validated
symbol activity, especially of a verbal
nature.
• A consensually validated symbol is one
which has been agreed upon by a group of
people as having a standard meaning.
• Words and numbers are the best
examples of such symbols.
• The syntaxic mode produces logical order
among experiences and enables people to
communicate with one another.
 4- The Dynamics of Personality

• Sullivan, in common with many other

personality theorists, conceives of
personality as an energy system whose
chief work consists of activities that will
reduce tension.
 4- The Dynamics of Personality
a-Tension:
• Sullivan begins with the familiar
conception of the organism as a tension
system that theoretically can vary between
the limits of absolute relaxation,
• or euphoria as Sullivan prefers to call it,
and absolute tension as exemplified by
extreme terror.
 4- The Dynamics of Personality
a-Tension:
There are two main sources of tension:
• (1) Tensions that arise from the needs of
the organism
• (2) Tensions that result from an anxiety
 4- The Dynamics of Personality
• Needs are connected with the physiochemical
requirements of life;
• they are such conditions as lack of food or water
or oxygen that produce a disequilibrium in the
economy of the organism.
• Needs may be general in character, such as
hunger, or they may be more specifically related
to a zone of the body, such as the infant’s need
to suck.
 4- The Dynamics of Personality
• Needs arrange themselves in a hierarchical
order;
• those lower down on the ladder must be
satisfied before those higher on the ladder can
be accommodated.
• One result of need reduction is an experience of
satisfaction.
• The typical consequence of prolonged failure to
satisfy the needs is a feeling of apathy that
produces a general lowering of the tensions.
 4- The Dynamics of Personality
b-Anxiety:
• Anxiety is the experience of tension that
results from real or imaginary threats to
one’s security.
• 1- It reduces the efficiency of the
individuals in satisfying their needs
• 2- Disturbs interpersonal relations
• 3- Produces confusion in thinking
 4- The Dynamics of Personality
• Anxiety varies in intensity depending upon the
seriousness of the threat and the effectiveness
of the security operations that the persons have
at their command.
• Severe anxiety is like a blow on the head; it
conveys no information to the person but instead
produces utter confusion and even amnesia.
• Less severe forms of anxiety can be
informative.
• In fact, Sullivan believes that anxiety is the first
great educative influence in living.
 5-The Development of
Personality
• Sullivan spells out the sequence of
interpersonal situations to which the
person is exposed in passing from infancy
to adulthood,
• and the ways in which these situations
contribute to the formation of personality.
 5-The Development of
Personality
Stages of Development:
• Sullivan spells six stages in the
development of personality:
– (1) Infancy
– (2) Childhood
– (3) The Juvenile Era
– (4) Preadolescence
– (5) Early Adolescence
– (6) Late Adolescence
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
1-Infancy:
• 1-The period of infancy extends from birth
to the appearance of articulate speech.
• It is the period in which the oral zone is the
primary zone of interaction between the
baby and its environment.
• Nursing provides the baby with its first
interpersonal experience.
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
• The other characteristic features of the stage are
• 1- Transition from a prototaxic to a parataxic mode of
cognition
• 2- The personifications such as the bad, anxious,
rejecting, frustrating mother and the good, relaxed,
accepting, satisfying mother,
• 3- The baby learns to satisfy its tensions independently
of the mother, for example, by thumb sucking
• 4- The learning of coordinated movements involving
hand and eye, hand and mouth, and ear and voice
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
2- Childhood:
• The transition from infancy to childhood is
made possible by the learning of language
and the organization of experience in the
syntaxic mode.
• Childhood extends from the emergence of
articulate speech to the appearance of the
need for playmates.
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
2- Childhood:
• The development of language permits,
among other things, the fusion of different
personifications, for instance, the good
and bad mother, and the integration of the
self-system into a more coherent structure.
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
3-The Juvenile Era:
• It extends throughout the most of the
school years.
• One acquires social subordination to
authority figures outside of family .
• one becomes competitive and
cooperative.
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
4- Preadolescence:
• The self-system begins to develop the conception of
gender: the little boy identifies with the masculine role as
prescribed by society, the little girl with the feminine role.
• The growth of symbolic ability enables the child to play
as being a grownup
• Sullivan calls these as if performances dramatizations
and to become concerned with various activities both
overt and covert that serve the purpose of warding off
punishment and anxiety.
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
5- Early Adolescence:
• The main problem of the period of early
adolescence is the development of a pattern of
heterosexual activity.
• The physiological changes of puberty are
experienced by the youth .
• Sullivan points out that many of the conflicts of
adolescence arise out of the opposing needs for
sexual gratification, security, and intimacy.
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
• 6-Late Adolescence:
• The period of late adolescence constitutes a
prolonged initiation into the privileges, duties,
satisfactions,
• and responsibilities of social living and
citizenship.
• The full complement of interpersonal relations
gradually takes form and there is a growth of
experience.
•
 5-The Development of
Personality
(Stages of Development)
• When the individual has ascended all of
these steps and reached the final stage of
adulthood,
• he or she has been transformed largely by
means of their interpersonal relations from
an animal organism into a human person.
 6- Research Methods
1- Interview
• Four stages of interview
2- Research on Schizophrenia
• Empathy was one of the greatest
personality traits of Sullivan.
 6- Research Methods

1- Interview:
• The Psychiatric Interview is Sullivan’s term
for the type of interpersonal,
• face to face situation that takes place
between the patient and the therapist.
• There may be only one interview or there
may be a sequence of interviews with a
patient extending over a long period of
time.
 6- Research Methods
• Sullivan divides the interview into four
stages:
• (1) The Formal Inception
• (2) Reconnaissance
• (3) Detailed Inquiry
• (4) The Termination
•
 6- Research Methods
• The interview is primarily a vocal communication
between two people.
• The interviewer should be alert to subtle changes in the
patient’s vocalizations (e.g., changes in volume) because
these clues often reveal vital evidence regarding the
patient’s focal problems and attitudinal changes towards
the therapist.
• In the inception, the interviewer should avoid asking too
many questions but should maintain an attitude of quiet
observation.
• The interviewer should try to determine the reasons for
the patient’s coming and something about the nature of
the patient’s problems.
 6- Research Methods
• 2 -Research on Schizophrenia:
• In his association with the hospital in Maryland,
during the years 1924 to 1931, reveal Sullivan’s
great talents for making contact with and
understanding the mind of the psychotic.
• Empathy was a highly developed trait in
Sullivan’s personality, and he used it to excellent
advantage in studying and treating the victims of
schizophrenia.
Recap