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FREUD WAS ABLE TO SAY THAT "our metapsychology is a mythology" Like Athena coming full grown out of Zeus' forehead, Freud's metapsychology also erupted from his creative use of clinical experience. However, he realized that what he had to say after leaping from observable neurological phenomena to psychoanalytic theory was difficult to prove. Thus did "mythology" become the foundation of a psychoanalytic theory.
Sullivan did not want a mythology. The importance of participant observation required setting limits to theory building. Also, he did not wish to build a theory that claimed to explain all human psychology, since that would be presumptuous and beyond the realm of any one person. What is observable, workable, and part of experience that can be consensually validated was the aim of interpersonal hypotheses. He was able to leave a foundation that can grow, change, develop, rather than stopping at a "mythology" where all is walled-in, and any new development in theory interchanged with a static language.
Dr. Klenbort's paper is an attempt to take on Sullivan's ideas concerning the "illusion of personal individuality". She calls his concepts an "intellectual ambivalence". Since ambivalence is a feeling state, I find this difficult to grasp. Ideas change as Sullivan changed. This is seen in his later ideas when they are contrasted with those of his Personal Psychopathology. She appears surprised that a medical man could describe personality so well, overlooking