Sullivan's Self-In-Development—Family Context and Patterning1

THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT ARE OFTEN appealing to clinicians because they seem tidy. The epistemological premise is that development refers to events which have occurred in the past and thus its purview is defined and contained. In the psychoanalytic tradition development seems to progress linearly in sharp contrast to the zig-zagging meanderings of therapeutic process. Interpersonal analysts, for the most part, have not dutifully tended this backyard garden, but have rather moved into the thicket of transference and countertransference. Their loyalty to the idea of the interpersonal, especially their desire to describe with precision the participants of a participant-observer matrix may account for this, but reflection on the significance of developmental theory to interpersonal praxis is overdue. I believe that a consideration of developmental assumptions can contribute to our understanding of the therapeutic field.

Wrightsman (1988) has heuristically identified three categories of developmental theories: 1) early formation theories which stress the first few years of life; 2) stage theories which focus on tasks germane to each stage of development, and; 3) dialectical approaches, which chart a timeless struggle between fundamental polarities in personality structure.

An important feature of Freud's legacy, the classical position stands on the genetic foundation of the psychobiological drives