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REEVALUATING HARRY BONE'S presidential address to the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society 15 years later is a most personal matter for me, both intrapersonal and interpersonal. Harry Bone and I were warm friends from the time I first knew him at the White Institute, about 1943, until his death in 1971. I heard him give this paper in 1959. I was impressed then, as I am now. And I was shocked then, as I am now, to reread comments on a meaning of "interpersonal, " as applied to Sullivanian theory, that excluded the "intrapersonal."
In this reevaluation, I will address myself to how well Bone performed the task he set himself. He states early in the paper,
Our task is, rather to free ourselves from the early and polemical aspects of his (Sullivan's) work, and to extend its usefulness by continuing the development of its essential aspects.
This was certainly a worthy aim. And then in conclusion, Bone states what he has actually tried to do, which is much less Sullivan oriented.
I have tried to show that by means of the two concepts, the Inter-personal and the Intra-personal, one may transcend the Lockean–Leibnitzian dualism, and also to extend the use of field theory in psychology.
He adds, finally,
I have also tried to show that the value of Inter-personal Theory is not diminished, but enhanced, by being expanded, so as to include explicit Intrapersonal Theory.