SULLIVAN'S INTERPERSONAL THEORY

• the first American to construct a comprehensive personality theory

  HARRY STACK SULLIVAN
• The theory that emphasizes without other people, humans would have no personality

  INTERPERSONAL THEORY
• theory that emphasized similarities among people rather than differences

  INTERPERSONAL THEORY
• Sullivan formed a close friendship with a 13-year old boy from a neighboring farm named Clarence Bellinger
• Like Freud and Jung, Sullivan, saw personality as an energy system
• Energy transformations transform tensions into either covert or overt behaviors
• Energy can exist either as TENSION (potentiality for action) or as ACTIONS themselves (energy transformations)
• a potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness

  TENSION
• Sullivan recognized two types of tensions: NEEDS and ANXIETY
• NEEDS — usually result in productive actions

  ANXIETY — leads to nonproductive or disintegrative behaviors
• tensions brought on by biological imbalance between a person and the physiochemical environment

  NEEDS
• Needs are EPISODIC — once they are satisfied, they temporarily lose their power, but after a time, they are likely to recur.
• The most basic interpersonal need

  TENDERNESS
• the need for tenderness is satisfied through the use of the INFANT'S MOUTH and the MOTHER'S HANDS
• is concerned with the overall wellbeing of a person

  GENERAL NEEDS
• arise from a particular area of the body

  ZONAL NEEDS
• the excess energy is transformed into consistent characteristic modes of behavior

  DYNAMISMS
• it is disjunctive, more diffuse and vague, and calls forth no consistent actions for its relief?

  ANXIETY
• Sullivan claimed that it is transferred from the parent to the infant through the process of EMPATHY
• the chief disruptive force blocking the development of healthy interpersonal relations

  ANXIETY
• complete lack of tension

  EUPHORIA
• usually stems from complex interpersonal situations and is only vaguely represented in awareness

  ANXIETY
• more clearly discerned and its origins more easily pinpointed

  FEAR
• Perhaps the most crucial stage of development is PREADOLESCENCE
• a period when children

  first possess the capacity for intimacy

  PREADOLOSENCE
• HARRY'S FATHER

  TIMOTHY SULLIVAN
• HARRY'S MOTHER

  ELLA STACK
• unique among all experiences

  in that they are totally unwanted and undesirable

  ANXIETY AND LONELINESS
• complete lack of tension

  EUPHORIA
• a tension in opposition to the tensions of needs and to action appropriate to their relief

  ANXIETY
• Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt or covert

  ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS
• Hidden actions

  COVERT
• visible or direct actions

  OVERT
• our behaviors that are aimed at satisfying needs and reducing anxiety

  ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS
• become organized as typical behavior patterns that characterize a person throughout a lifetime

  ENERGY TRANSFORMATION
• behavior patterns

  DYNAMISM
• 2 MAJOR CLASSES of DYNAMISM

  1 related to the zones of the body

  2 related to the tension
• related to tensions

  • the disjunctive
  • the isolating
  • conjunctive
• dynamisms include those destructive patterns of behavior that

  are related to the concept of malevolence

  DISJUNCTIVE
• include those behavior patterns that are unrelated to interpersonal relations

  ISOLATING