Sullivan's Views on the Obsessional States

A REVIEW OF HARRY STACK SULLIVAN'S role in the historical development of personality theory and the therapy of disordered living is long overdue. His influence can be recognized in every aspect of the behavioral sciences and his focus on the interpersonal elements in all human behavior, both individual and group, is especially notable in the burgeoning new theories that utilize the essential elements of communication or transactional theory. The relevance of his concepts can easily be identified in the Gestalt, Rational, Cognitive and communications theories as well as in the behavior modification approaches. It has been pointed out time and again that Sullivan is the secret agent who remains unacknowledged as the grandfather of these highly touted and so-called "original" developments in psychotherapy.

Sullivan's psychiatric theorizing was based on the contributions of early deviationists from Freud's psychoanalytic theory and therefore he had fewer preconceptions and entrenched and reified concepts of human functioning to undo than did his predecesors. His involvement was initially with the more severe clinical problems and although his earliest publications were in the traditional classical psychoanalytic mode, he soon abandoned the libido theory and the accompanying jargon, which he felt was inexact and tied to mechanistic, 19th century scientific philosophizing. His preoccupation with preciseness and his concern for definitions and formulations that were logically and scientifically sound required a new set of terms that unfortunately alienated many potential adherents. More significantly, these requirements interfered with his publishing and the only written legacy he left was an expanded set of notes called: "The Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry, " an incomplete autobiography, and a wealth of notebooks and recorded lectures which were transcribed and edited and form the basis of Sullivan's contributions to social psychology and psychiatry.