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Chapman, A. H., Harry Stack Sullivan: The Man and His Work New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976.
THERE ARE THOSE AUTHORITIES WHO claim that Sullivan's ideas have shaped American psychiatry pervasively, but without due recognition. A. H. Chapman is among them. He further asserts that "Some psychiatrists including myself, feel that Sullivan's work makes him the most important figure in psychiatry in the last 100 years, and that his concepts and treatment techniques are much more valid and useful than those of Freud and many others."
These convictions inspired Harry Stack Sullivan: The Man and His Work, Chapman's effort toward a more adequate appreciation of inter-personal theory. The book has several interlocking objectives. Among them, the foremost is to offer an easily readable translation of Sullivan, at a level useful for mental health professionals as well as for intelligent lay people. Another is to illuminate the characteristics of the system through biographical data to suggest how Sullivan's life experiences shaped his insights. Moreover, Chapman intends to provide a balanced assessment of "the weaknesses as well as the strengths of both Sullivan and his work, " instead of falling into that facile and familiar pattern of merely extolling virtues.
A robust affirmation of Sullivan, balanced by the promise of judicious evaluation, evoked very positive anticipations in a fan like me, as I began to read. I mused, it might be just the source to refresh my own memory or to suggest to budding clinicians. The table of contents encouraged these expectations. A first section on "The Life and Emotional Problems of Harry Stack Sullivan" is followed by seven chapters covering his thought. Two of these survey basic theoretical ideas followed by two more on Sullivanian developmental theory, then another pair of chapters on interpersonal