Collective Parataxis

IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II—as we ominously go on terming it—Harry Stack Sullivan was captivated like others by the hope that his profession could help to prevent the recurrence of war and companion disasters like racism, political repression and religious persecution. He threw himself into this effort with characteristic energy, intellectual boldness and organizing ability. At the time of his death, he was pushing furiously into this forbidding territory. One of the several reasons for grief over termination of his brilliant flash across our mental horizon was that it halted the interdisciplinary expedition he was mobilizing to explore the sources of man's monstrous inhumanity to man. The figure of speech that comes strongly to mind is of President Thomas Jefferson dispatching Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest Territory, with Sullivan in the role of Jefferson and this audience contemplating whether to attempt the roles of Lewis and Clark.

That the prospect of venturing into such territory is daunting no one should deny. While fools are ever ready to rush in with epithets in lieu of explanation, like calling malefactors "sick, " it is far from clear that psychiatry, even defined as broadly as Sullivan defined it, can claim already to have illuminated the wilderness of shared insanity. In his last few writings, Sullivan seemed less and less optimistic, but he pressed on bravely out of his commitment to do whatever can be done. I can think, however, as at the memorial meeting 28 years ago, of no tribute more fitting to pay Sullivan a generation after his departure than to fix our attention on the unfinished tasks he left us, among which this problem of how to relate the disorders of interpersonal relations with the disasters of social life around the globe is pre-eminent. The prospect is daunting in part because to proceed it is unavoidable to leave behind familiar haunts and occupations—for example, the comfortable scale and habits and rewards of practi