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anxiety and maintains our interpersonal security. The self-system is a conjunctive dynamism, but because
its primary job is to protect the self from anxiety, it tends to stifle personality change. Experiences that are
inconsistent with our self-system threaten our security and necessitate our use of security operations, which
consist of behaviors designed to reduce interpersonal tensions. One such security operation is dissociation,
which includes all those experiences that we block from awareness. Another is selective inattention, which
involves blocking only certain experiences from awareness.
V. Personifications
Sullivan believed that people acquire certain images of self and others throughout
the developmental stages, and he referred to these subjective perceptions
as personifications.
A. Bad-Mother, Good-Mother
The bad-mother personification grows out of infants' experiences with a nipple
that does not satisfy their hunger needs. All infants experience the bad-mother personification, even though
their real mothers may be loving and nurturing. Later, infants acquire a good-mother personification as they
become mature enough to recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of their mothering one. Still later,
these two personifications combine to form a complex and contrasting image of
the real mother.
B. Me Personifications
During infancy, children acquire three "me" personifications: (1) the bad-me, which grows from experiences
of punishment and disapproval, (2) the good-me, which results from experiences with reward and approval,
and (3) the not-me, which allows a person to dissociate or selectively inattend the experiences related to
anxiety.
C. Eidetic Personifications
One of Sullivan's most interesting observations was that people often create imaginary traits that they
project onto others. Included in these eidetic personifications are the imaginary playmates that preschoolaged children
often have. These imaginary friends enable children to have a safe, secure relationship with another person,
even though that person is imaginary.
VI. Levels of Cognition
Sullivan recognized three levels of cognition, or ways of perceiving things-prototaxic, parataxic, and
syntaxic.
A. Prototaxic Level
Experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others are called prototaxic.
Newborn infants experience images mostly on a prototaxic level, but adults, too, frequently have preverbal
experiences that are momentary and incapable of being communicated.
B. Parataxic Level
Experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others are called
parataxic. Included in these are erroneous assumptions about cause and effect, which Sullivan termed
parataxic distortions.
C. Syntaxic Level
Experiences that can be accurately communicated to others are called syntaxic. Children become capable of
syntaxic language at about 12 to 18 months of age when words begin to have the same meaning for them
that they do for others.
VII. Stages of Development
Sullivan saw interpersonal development as taking place over seven stages, from infancy to mature
adulthood. Personality changes can take place at any time but are more likely to occur during transitions
between stages.
A. Infancy
The period from birth until the emergence of syntaxic language is called infancy, a time when the child
receives tenderness from the mothering one while also learning anxiety through an empathic linkage with
the mother. Anxiety may increase to the point of terror, but such terror is controlled by the built-in
protections of apathy and somnolent detachment that allow the baby to go to sleep. During infancy children
use autistic language, which takes place on a prototaxic or parataxic level.
B. Childhood
The stage that lasts from the beginning of syntaxic language until the need for playmates of equal status is
called childhood. The child's primary interpersonal relationship continues to be with the mother, who is now
differentiated from other persons who nurture the child.
C. Juvenile Era
The juvenile stage begins with the need for peers of equal status and continues until the child develops a
need for an intimate relationship with a chum. At this time, children should learn how to compete, to
compromise, and to cooperate. These three abilities, as well as an orientation toward living, help a child
develop intimacy, the chief dynamism of the next developmental stage.
D. Preadolescence
Perhaps the most crucial stage is preadolescence, because mistakes made earlier can
be corrected during preadolescence, but errors made during preadolescence are nearly impossible to
overcome in later life. Preadolescence spans the time from the need
for a single best friend until puberty. Children who do not learn intimacy during preadolescence have added
difficulties relating to potential sexual partners during
later stages.
E. Early Adolescence
With puberty comes the lust dynamism and the beginning of early adolescence. Development during this
stage is ordinarily marked by a coexistence of intimacy
with a single friend of the same gender and sexual interest in many persons of the opposite gender.
However, if children have no preexisting capacity for intimacy, they may confuse lust with love and develop
sexual relationships that are devoid
of true intimacy.
F. Late Adolescence
Chronologically, late adolescence may start at any time after about age 16, but psychologically, it begins
when a person is able to feel both intimacy and lust toward the same person. Late adolescence is
characterized by a stable pattern of sexual activity and the growth of the syntaxic mode, as young people
learn how to live in the adult world.
G. Adulthood
Late adolescence flows into adulthood, a time when a person establishes a stable relationship with a
significant other person and develops a consistent pattern of viewing the world.
found that patients tended to have relatively stable behaviors that were consistent with the way their
therapists treated them. Later, these researchers reported therapists' professional training was less
important to successful therapy than the therapists' own developmental history.
B. Intimate Relationships with Friends
Elizabeth Yaughn and Stephen Nowicki studied intimate interpersonal relationships in same-gender dyads
and found that women-but not men-had complementary interpersonal styles with their close women friends.
Also, women were more likely than men to engage in a wide variety of activities with their intimate friend, a
finding that suggests that women develop deeper same-gender friendships than do men.
C. Imaginary Friends
Other researchers have studied Sullivan's notion of imaginary playmates and have found that children who
have identifiable eidetic playmates tend to be more socialized, less aggressive, more intelligent, and to have
a better sense of humor than children who do not report having an imaginary playmate.