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HARRY STACK SULLIVAN HAS MADE A significant contribution to child and adolescent psychiatry. A typical paradigm is the children's mental health centre Redbank House, at Westmead Hospital, in Sydney, N.S.W. This centre includes a community outreach programme, outpatient, day-patient and in-patient services. For the younger children, in-patient admission consists of whole family admission and a consistent application of family systems plus milieu therapy. For the adolescent in-patient and day-patient programme, a systems approach is utilized with the peer group sub-system involved in group psychotherapy, patient-staff therapeutic community meetings, team-family therapy and individual psychotherapy for selected patients. An ecological systems point of view (Auerswald, 1972) is used as an envelope into which is integrated systemic family therapy theory and Sullivanian interpersonal theory (Siegel, 1986).
In this paper, I will elaborate on the Sullivanian interpersonal theory component of the larger systems envelope and will try to demonstrate how that model was the logical precursor of family and eco-systemic theory. I will also endeavour a critical re-appraisal of Sullivan's work in the light of developing object-relations and self-psychology theories.
Harry Stack Sullivan created a major revision of psychoanalytic theory. He developed an interpersonal psychology rooted in