If you find this useful, don't forget to hit 'love.' • Feist, J. & Feist, G. (2009). Theories of personality (7th ed.). USA: McGraw−Hill Companies • Tria, D. & Limpingco. (2007). Personality (3rd ed.). Quezon City, Philippines: Ken Inc. • Daniel, V. Object relations theory. Retrieved as of 2016 from https://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/objectrelations.html Other references: • Cervone, D. & Pervine, L. (2013). Personality: Theory and research (12th ed.). USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. • Cloninger, S. (2004). Theories of personality: Understanding persons (4th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. • Ryckman, R. (2008).Theories of personality (9th ed.). USA: Thomson Wadsworth

1. Harry Sullivan’s Interpersonal
Theory
Presented by:
Mary Anne A. Portuguez, MP, RPm

2. Harry Sullivan’s
Interpersonal
Theory

3. BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
• Harry Stack Sullivan, (born Feb. 21, 1892, Norwich, N.Y., U.S.—
died Jan. 14, 1949, Paris), U.S. psychiatrist who developed a theory
of psychiatry based on interpersonal relationships. Sullivan received
his M.D. from the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery in 1917.
At St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., he came under the
influence of the psychiatrist William Alanson White. After 1930
Sullivan devoted himself chiefly to teaching and elaborating his ideas,
working with social scientists

4. BASIC TENET
People are socially created animals. Sullivan emphasized that
society is the actual creator of people’s personalities. He
stressed the importance of interpersonal theory. The human
being does not exist as a simple personality; its personality
can only exist in relation to others.

5. Energy System
• Tensions
• Action
Energy transformation, transforms tensions into covert or overt
behaviors and are aimed at satisfying needs and reducing anxiety.

6. TWO TYPES OF TENSIONS
• Needs, tensions brought on by biological imbalance between a
person and the physiochemical environment, both inside and outside
the organism.
• Anxiety,

7. Dynamism
• Smallest unit employed in the study of the individual. It is defined as
the relatively enduring pattern of transformation which recurrently
characterizes the organism in its duration as a living organism.
• It may be equated to a habit.

8. Two Classes of Dynamisms
• Specific to the body
Zonal needs (may satisfy the general needs)
• Tensions (potential for actions)

9. Three Classes of Dynamism:
• Disjunctive dynamisms include those destructive patterns of
behavior that are related to the concept of malevolence
• Isolating dynamisms include those behavior patterns (such as lust)
that are unrelated to interpersonal relations
• Intimacy and the Self-system

10. Self-system
• a consistent pattern of behaviors that maintains people’s
interpersonal security by protecting them from anxiety.
Two 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. It differs from dissociation in both degree and origin.

11. Personification
• It is an image that one has of himself/herself or of another person. It
is a complex web of feelings, attitudes, and conceptions that grows
out of experiences with the need- satisfaction and anxiety.
• Personifications shared by most people are called stereotypes.

12. The Good Me, the Bad Me, and the Not Me
• Sullivan made a distinction among three selves:
• The ‘good me’ versus the ‘bad me’ based on social
appraisal and the anxiety that results from
negative feedback
• The ‘not me’ refers to the unknown, repressed
component of the self

13. The Developmental Epochs
1. Infancy, the child begins the process of developing, but Sullivan
did not emphasize the younger years to near the importance as
Freud.
2. Childhood, development of speech and improved
communication is key in this stage of development.
3. Juvenile era, need for playmates and the beginning of healthy
socialization
4. Preadolescence, the child’s ability to form a close relationship
with a peer
5. Early adolescence, need for friendship to a need for sexual
expression
6. Late adolescence, need for friendship and need for sexual
expression get combined; long term relationship is primary focus.

14. Evaluation of Sullivan’s Theory
• Sullivan incited interest in interpersonal theory, particularly on
aspects of agency and communion
• Critics note the abstract nature of his concepts and the resultant lack
of empirical testing
• The role of interpersonal factors in his theory may be overextended