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To the Editors:
Interpersonal relations without individuality again.
In the exchange on Harry Stack Sullivan in the last number of This Journal [Vol. 8, No. 1, Fall 1971, pp. 64–81], one participant, Dr. Ralph Crowley, saw fit to introduce some unrelated personal remarks as part of his reply (pp. 80–81). They, of course, do not affect the substantive issues. Instead of responding to them, I would, therefore, like to remind the interested reader of passages in Sullivan's Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry that indicate the absence of individuality from interpersonal relations.
First, from the Foreword to the third White Psychiatric Foundation printing (1947), page vi, third paragraph:
Gordon Allport and H. S. Odbert some years ago listed 17, 953 words used to indicate alleged qualities of human individuality … I have inveighed against "the delusion of unique individuality" and referred to personality as the hypothetical entity which we posit to account for interpersonal relations. I do not believe that this denies anyone "a personality"; it serves its purpose if it warns anyone that I never expect to know all about his personality—and am as certain as can be that he too will always share my ignorance in that regard.
to the last paragraph of the page that ends on the next:
Without digressing on the value of the comparative approach in formulating noncultural and especially nonlanguage aspects of living, I seek here to stress the central fact that the true or absolute individuality of a person is always beyond scientific grasp and invariably much less significant in the person's living than he has been taught to believe.
And second, from the paragraph on page 5, first printed in 1940 and, without change, reprinted in 1945 and 1947, that begins:
The unique individuality of the other fellow need never concern us as scientists.