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SULLIVAN'S NOTION OF "PERSONIFICATION" implies that the way a person relates to other people is a reflection of how "people" are represented mentally, how the "self" is represented mentally, and at what developmental level the concept of "relationship" is represented mentally. Further, and perhaps more important, it is the maturational level of the patient's representational world which determines the degree to which Sullivan's concept of consensual validation is possible as a therapeutic process, and thereby shapes one's analytic approach to any given patient. It is, in other words, the bridge which links developmental theory to the interpersonal method of participant observation.
In another paper I presented a structuralistic perspective of consensual validation (Bromberg 1980) which I suggested might allow the concept greater theoretical scope in accounting for therapeutic regression and the depth of change that we observe clinically in the process of psychoanalysis. I offered the view that as a necessary step, the developmental continuum of mental representation in interpersonal theory needs to progress beyond Sullivan's personifications of "good-me", "bad-me", and "not-me", and that the groundwork had already been prepared by Sullivan (1950) for subsequent elaboration, despite his own reluctance to take these ideas farther.
It has been suggested (e.g. Klenbort 1978) that a possible reason for Sullivan's hesitancy in doing so is that it would have required him to make a clearer distinction between the concepts of self, and self system —a distinction which was implied in his early formulation of self dynamism (Sullivan 1940, pp. 18-29) —and would have thus opened the door to the idea of unique individuality, a notion which he vigorously challenged. (See Crowley 1973), (1975), (1978.) The