Strindberg's Inferno and Sullivan's "Extravasation of Meaning"

WE ARE GATHERED here tonight to do honor to the memory of Harry Stack Sullivan. With his surpassing clinical and theoretical brilliance he was not always tolerant of slow-wittedness in his students. Students were known literally to tremble in anticipation of Dr. Sullivan. Perhaps this accounts in part for why I feel humble as well as grateful for your invitation to give this memorial lecture.

Sullivan was a great teacher. Not the least of his greatness was his gift for pungent and memorable phrases, memorable not just because they were vivid and attention-gripping, but, more importantly, because they captured, clarified, and provided organizing handles for even the most bewilderingly complex of clinical phenomena. One such phrase is "the extravasation of meaning." I have found this concept very helpful in organizing my thoughts about schizophrenia and have chosen it as a focus for the ideas I shall present to you this evening.

Sullivan (1956) considered "the extravasation of meaning" an outstanding characteristic of schizophrenia. He said,

… meaning spreads widely … a great many things that have not seemed meaningful since early childhood again become important ingredients of the relevant universe of the schizophrenic … the