Sullivan’s Conceptions

Harry Stack Sullivan was born into a moderately poor, farming family in Norwich, New York, on February 21, 1892. Sullivan was one of the original sponsors of the William Alan-son White Psychiatric Foundation, incorporated in 1933. In 1937, the Foundation established the professional journal Psychiatry , with Sullivan as co-editor. He was a significant contributor to this publication throughout the remainder of his life. A series of more critical and evaluative essays concerning Sullivanian theory appears in a volume edited by Patrick Mullahy. The human neonate, according to Sullivan, arrives in the world as an animal, albeit a remarkably gifted one in the sense of his potential for accomplishment. Two classes of personifications which make their appearance in infancy are regarded by Sullivan as especially important—those relating to the mothering person, and those relating to the self. According to Sullivan, “personality is the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations which characterize a human life”.

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