Harry Sullivan

Presented by: Jomarie Cristino

& Sheila Dulguime

Biography
Born in the small town of Norwich, New York, on
February 21, 1892
Only surviving child of poor Irish Catholic parents
Mother: Ella Sullivan
Father: Timothy Sullivan

Biography
Was taken care of by his grandmother when his
mother disappeared
He had neither friends nor acquaintances and felt
like an outsider when he was young
Had a friend, named Clarence Bellinger, when he
was 8 years old

Biography
Valedictorian in high school at age 16
Entered Cornell University intending to become a
physicist but was suspended after 1 year.
Enrolled in Chicago College of Medicine and
Surgery
Went to St. Elizabeth Hospital and got acquainted
with William Alanson White

Biography
Worked with large numbers of schizophrenic
patients
Brought into contact with Karen Horney and Erich
Fromm because of his residence in New York

Tensions
Tension - is a potentiality for action that may or
may not be experienced in awareness.
Energy Transformations transform tensions into
either covert or overt behaviors and are aimed at
satisfying needs and reducing anxiety.

Tensions
Many tensions, such as anxiety, premonitions,
drowsiness, hunger, and sexual excitement, are
felt but not always on a conscious level. In fact,
probably all felt tensions are at least partial
distortions of reality.

2 Types of Tensions: Needs &

Anxiety
Needs are tensions brought on by biological
imbalance between a person and the
physiochemical environment, both inside and
outside the organism.
Needs are episodic --- once they are satisfied,
they temporarily lose their power, but after time,
they are likely to recur.
Tenderness the most basic interpersonal need. It
is a general need because it is concerned with the
overall well-being of a person.

2 Types of Tensions: Needs &

Anxiety
Anxiety differs from tensions of needs in that it
is disjunctive, is more diffuse and vague, and calls
forth no consistent actions for its relief.
Ex. If infant lacks food (which is a need), their
course of action is clear, but if they are anxious,
they can do little to escape from that anxiety.
Anxiety originates from the parent and then
transferred to the infant through the process of
empathy.
Anxiety is also the chief disruptive force blocking
the development of healthy interpersonal
relations.

2 Types of Tensions: Needs &

Anxiety
Anxiety produces behaviors that:
Prevent people from learning from their mistakes
Keep people pursuing a childish wish for security,
and
Generally ensure that people will not learn from
their experiences.

Dynamisms
Dynamisms traits or habit patterns
Dynamisms has two major classes: first, those
related to specific zones of the body, including the
mouth, anus, and genitals; and second, those
related to tensions.
The second class is composed of three categories
The disjunctive, the isolating, and the
conjunctive

Disjunctive Dynamism:
Malevolence
Malevolence is the disjunctive dynamism of evil
and hatred, characterized by the feeling of living
among ones enemies.
It originates around age of 2 or 3 years when
childrens actions that earlier had brought about
maternal tenderness are rebuffed, ignored, or met
with anxiety and pain.

Conjunctive Dynamism:
Intimacy
Intimacy grows out of the earlier need for
tenderness but is more specific and involves a
close interpersonal relationship between two
people who are more or less of equal status.
It is an integrating dynamism that tends to draw
out loving reactions from the other person,
thereby decreasing anxiety and loneliness, two
extremely painful experiences.

Isolating Dynamism: Lust

Lust an isolating tendency, requiring no other
person for its satisfaction.
Lust is an especially powerful dynamism during
adolescence, at which time it often leads to a
reduction of self-esteem.

Self-System
Self-system a consistent pattern of behaviors
that maintains peoples interpersonal security by
protecting them from anxiety.
Like intimacy, the self-system is a conjunctive
dynamism that arises out of the interpersonal
situation, but it develops earlier than intimacy at
about age 12 to 18 months.

Self-System
As children develop intelligence and foresight,
they become able to learn which behaviors are
related to an increase or decrease in anxiety.
This ability provides the self-system a built-in
warning device.

Security Operations
Reduces feelings of insecurity or anxiety that
result from endangered self-esteem.

Two important security

operations
Dissociation includes those impulses, desires,
and needs that a person refuses to allow into
awareness.
Selective Inattention is a refusal to see those
things that we do not wish to see.

Personifications
People acquire certain images of themselves and
others.
These images begin in infancy and continues
throughout the various developmental stages.

Personifications: Bad-Mother,
Good-Mother
It is not an accurate image of the real mother
but merely the infants vague representation of
not being properly fed.
After the bad-mother personification is formed, an
infant will acquire a good-mother personification
based on the tender and cooperative behaviors of
the mothering one.

Me Personifications
During mid-infancy, a child acquires three
personifications:
Bad-Me fashioned from experiences of
punishment and disapproval that infants receive
from their mothering one.
Good-Me results from infants experiences with
reward and approval.
Not-Me caused by sudden severe anxiety and
they either dissociate or selectively inattend
experiences related to that anxiety.

Eidetic Personifications
Unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that many
children invent in order to protect their selfesteem.

Levels of Cognition
Protaxic Level Earliest and most primitive
experiences of an infant takes place here. These
experiences cannot be communicated so it is
difficult to describe or define.
Parataxic Level These experiences are prelogical
and usually result when a person assumes a
cause-and-effect relationship between two events
that occur conincidentally. Communicated through
a distorted fashion.
Syntaxic Level experiences that are
consensually validated and that can be
symbolically communicated takes place here.
Communicated through words and gestures.

Stages of Development
Stage

Age

Signific Interperson
ant
al Process
Others

Important
Learnings

Infancy

02
years

Motheri
ng one

Tenderness

Good/Bad Me
or Mother

Childhood

26
years

Parents

Imaginary
playmates

Syntaxic
language

Juvenile Era

68
years

Playmat
es of
equal
status

Living in the
world of
peers

Competition,
compromise,
cooperation

Preadolesce
nce

8 - 13
years

Single
chum

Intimacy

Affection and
respect from
peers

Early
Adolescence

13 15
years

Several
chum

Intimacy and
lust to others

Balance of
Lust and
intimacy

Late

15 -

Lover

Fusion of

Discovery of