Sullivan as Pragmatic Visionary: Operationalist and OperRelationalist

Harry Stack Sullivan knew about trauma. He knew a lot about trauma. And he knew about it personally. Too personally. He knew a lot about dissociation, too. But he never showed how or if he worked with it clinically. As an analytic candidate, I was frustrated—and finally gave up—trying to discover where in Sullivan's writing I might find something that would help me work clinically with dissociation. It wasn't there. What was there was his brilliant insight into what it was and how it—dissociation—manifested itself. But nowhere to be found was anything that helped me as a clinician. I have now come to understand why. And, in the process of discovery, I came to appreciate why the secret relationship between “Dr. Sullivan,” the genius, and the trauma survivor who always accompanied him—the hidden child I call “Harry”—provides a chance for me to finally offer my recognition of the extent to which his phrase “more simply human than otherwise” is an overdue tribute to their relationship and to the breathtaking conceptualization of what it means to be human, which revolutionized psychoanalytic thinking—a feat that was accomplished through this relationship, because of it, and in spite of it.