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Sullivan's characterization of the self is, by now, well-known. He maintains that the self is made up of reflected appraisals. The self, in other words, suggests a mosaic comprised of interpersonal responses mirroring the interpersonal responses of significant others in the social and cultural surround. Such is his statement of the issue, operationist through and through. Whatever else there may be to the overall psychology of the self it extends beyond the interpersonal perspective. Only the reflected self's interpersonal relations are open and amenable to the operationist inquiry.
But, strictly adopted, the clinical effect of such interpersonal delimitation is quite serious, and it has continuing impact on the field of therapeutic inquiry to which it is applied. The reason for this is already implied: interpersonal psychoanalysts, strongly committed to the study of the interpersonal dimension of the psyche, do not look to explore its other dimensions. This strong clinical emphasis on the operational interface of personality inevitably demarcates the working range of interpersonal therapeutic inquiry.
A thoroughgoing operationism lacks the systematic leverage required to move the intensive psychotherapeutic inquiry beyond that level of descriptive