You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This article, edited by Dr. Otto A. Will, Jr., was prepared from recordings of Sullivan's lectures and represents the first lecture in a course presented at
the Washington School of Psychiatry. In view of its nature as a lecture rather than an article for publication it tends to ramble through many areas of psychiatry as Sullivan presents his own, often unique, approach to patients. Starting with the premise that there is no restriction to the relevance of his conceptions, whether the field be medicine, social work, or personnel management, Sullivan defines an interview as 'a situation of primarily vocal communication in a two-group, more or less voluntary, integrated, on a progressively unfolding expert-client basis, for the purpose of elucidating characteristic patterns of living of the subject person, the patient or client, which patterns he experiences as particularly troublesome or especially valuable, and in the revealing of which he expects to derive benefit'. From this point on the lecture carefully defines and explains each element in this essential definition and liberally exemplifies each with partial interviews drawn from Sullivan's own experience. In several places he warns of common pitfalls such as loss of objectivity, pursuit of prestige or gain of personal satisfaction on the part of the interviewer. Introducing the term parataxic distortion, Sullivan demonstrates that the patient may not communicate to the interviewer the same characteristics which he, in general, communicates to others. In conclusion he lists certain 'antipsychiatric elements in the culture which block our way to better understanding'.