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IT WAS with a sense of humility and pride that I accepted the invitation to participate in the Harry Stack Sullivan Memorial Lecture series. I speak with modesty because I bring no original discoveries. I am proud to be here because Sullivan and the people around him had a more profound influence on my professional and personal life than any subsequent training experience. Perhaps that training period approached what Sullivan referred to as a "restitutive experience"—albeit in a prolonged adolescence. While I was originally attracted to Chestnut Lodge by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and some of her excellent lectures, it was Harry Stack Sullivan who provided a bridge between my mid-Western pragmatism and the more theoretical aspects of psychoanalysis.
His concept of the interpersonal field as a source of solid evidence provided a generation of psychiatrists and behavioral scientists with the promise of testing psychological and sociological theories against behavioral and clinical observations. In short, he provided a methodological basis for the subsequent growth of ego psychology, social psychology, and cultural anthropology. His methodological concepts had intellectual impact upon behavioral science, which is perhaps as important in retrospect as his making the understanding of schizophrenia a respectable pursuit for psychiatrists.