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In Recent Years, postmodern and relational schools of psychoanalysis have been greatly influenced by Sullivan's constructivist concept of the self. Sullivan (1936-37, 1950) claimed that a belief in our unique individuality is a delusion. He exploded the myth of a person as a single self, proposing that we have as many personalities as interpersonal relations, thereby anticipating the postmodernist movement in psychoanalysis with its emphasis on the decentered, multiple self. According to Sullivan (1950), “no such thing as the durable, unique, individual personality is ever clearly justified. For all I know every human being has as many personalities as he has interpersonal relations” (pp. 219-220). The “over-weening conviction of authentic individual selfhood … amounts to a delusion of unique individuality” (Sullivan, 1936-37, p. 16).
Although this aspect of Sullivan's theory freed us to examine our multiplicity as persons, it also raised questions regarding our unity, an area that remains relatively unformulated in interpersonal theory. Lionells (1999) has referred to this as the problem of the independent psychic existence in the midst of psychological flux. If there is multiplicity, is unity in the person merely an illusion? If I am merely an agglomeration of “personalities,” is there no “I”? (Bromberg, 1998). If there is no “I,” whither authenticity? (Mitchell, 1993).
Sullivan's view of individual uniqueness as an illusion set off a debate that continues to this day (See Frederickson, 2000; Lionells, 1995). From the very beginning, numerous theorists criticized Sullivan's omission of uniqueness as a valid quality of the human person (Wolstein, 1971; Crowley, 1973; Freidland, 1978; Klenbort, 1978; Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Moore, 1984). Mullahy (1947) held that our individuality is a prerequisite