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WHEN I FIRST READ THE TITLE of Dr. Levenson's paper but did not yet have the text, I wondered what his reference might be. One of the possibilities was "Charlotte's Web, " the children's story by E. B. White. A pet pig, Wilbur, is saved from being slaughtered by the friendly efforts of a spider, Charlotte, who spins a number
of webs that spell out Wilbur's virtues for all to see. His life is spared and he is allowed to remain a pet for the rest of his days.
But the spider of Dr. Levenson's title turned out instead to be the terrifying creature of Sullivan's dream, the symbol of severe anxiety. My aim in this discussion is to consider certain aspects of Dr. Levenson's protrayal of Sullivan's ideas. I shall compare his view with mine, as I have formed it over the years and upon rereading Sullivan for this occasion.
But what are the essential ideas in Dr. Levenson's rich and scintillating paper? To discover them I had to work my way through unifying trope, epistemic assumptions, semiotic communication, semiotic control, syncretic network, crisis theory, anachronistic paradigm, nexus of information, operational semiotic viewpoint—an exhilarating task, in the face of initial bewilderment that called for mobilizing psychic energies, even as such energies came under challenge in Dr. Levenson's presentation.
As I have come to understand it, the thrust of Dr. Levenson's paper is to be found in his assertion that Sullivan recanted on his interpersonal thesis, backing away from its more radical implications. The alleged backsliding consisted in Sullivan's reversion to drive theory, to an energic model. The core of the supposedly altered theory is anxiety.
To make his case, Levenson has drawn upon certain of Sullivan's statements on anxiety, upon observations by other authors about Sullivan, and