Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory of personality development It is one of the best known in the field of psychoanalysis.
In this article we will describe the main concepts and postulates of this model, whose focus on interpersonal relationships greatly influenced the subsequent developments of psychotherapy.
Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) published the work in 1953 “The interpersonal theory of psychiatry”; In this he developed his personality model , which is framed in the paradigm of psychoanalysis. More specifically, we can classify Sullivan in neo-Freudism, along with authors such as Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Erik Fromm or Erik Erikson.
Sullivan defended a conception of psychiatry according to which this science should have interactions between human beings as its object of study. Thus highlighted the fundamental relevance of interpersonal relationships (both real and imaginary) in the configuration of personality, and consequently also of psychopathology.
For this author, personality can be defined as a pattern of behavior related to situations of interaction with other people. It would be a stable and complex entity, determined both by innate physiological and interpersonal needs and by learning through early experiences and the socialization process.
In this sense, the personality would be formed progressively based on contact with the social environment and one’s own ability to satisfy needs, as well as the tension that these cause from both a biological and psychological point of view. Failures in this type of learning and lack of psychological adaptation would lead to pathology.
HS Sullivan’s theory of personality, and in particular his focus on social interactions, led to the emergence of the school of interpersonal psychoanalysis This current also differs from the Freudian variant in its interest in individuality and the importance it gives to the mutual relationship between therapist and patient.
Stable factors that form personality
According to Sullivan, the construct we know as “personality” is made up of three stable aspects: the dynamics and needs the Ego System and personifications
All of them develop from interaction with other people and how we resolve our physiological and social impulses.
1. Needs and dynamics
Interpersonal psychoanalysis defines two major sets of human needs : those of self-satisfaction and those of security. The first are associated with physiology and include nutrition, excretion, activity or sleep; Safety needs are more psychological in nature, such as the avoidance of anxiety and maintenance of self-esteem.
Dynamisms are complex patterns of behavior and more or less stable that have the function of satisfying a specific basic need – or, in Sullivan’s words, of “transforming the physical energy of the organism.” There are two types of dynamics: those that are related to specific parts of the body and those associated with experiences of fear and anxiety.
2. The Ego System
The Self System develops throughout childhood as we experience anxiety and relieve it through other people. It is a psychic structure that fulfills the function of managing anxiety, that is, dealing with safety needs With age it also adopts the function of protecting self-esteem and social image.
Sullivan uses the term “personification” to refer to the ways in which children interpret the world: attributing to people and groups characteristics of others, based both on interaction experiences and on personal beliefs and fantasies. The personifications will have a great importance in social relationships throughout life
Modes of experience: the development of the mind
Following Sullivan’s approaches, personality is formed through the transfer of the interpersonal to the intrapsychic. In this way, if a person’s needs during childhood are satisfactorily met, they will achieve a sense of self-confidence and security; If not, he will develop a tendency to feel insecurity and anxiety.
The ways we experience our physical and social environment They change depending on age, the degree of language proficiency and the correct satisfaction of needs. In this sense, Sullivan described three modes of experience: prototaxic, parataxic and syntactic. Each of them is subordinate to those that appear later.
1. Prototaxic experience
Babies experience life as a succession of unrelated organismic states. There is no conception of causality nor a true sense of time. Progressively You will become aware of the parts of the body that interact with the outside in which sensations of tension and relief occur.
2. Parataxic experience
During childhood, people differentiate themselves from the environment and obtain knowledge about the ways to satisfy our needs; This allows the appearance of personal symbols through which we establish relationships between events and sensations, such as those of causality.
Sullivan spoke of “parataxic distortion” to refer to to the emergence of experiences of this type in more advanced stages of life. They fundamentally consist of relating to others in a way equivalent to that which occurred with significant people in the past; this would manifest itself in the transfer, for example.
When personality development occurs in a healthy way, syntactic thinking appears, which has a sequential and logical character and is constantly modified based on new experiences. Besides symbols are validated through consensus with other people, which gives a social meaning to behavior.
