Chapter 7 Sullivan, Horney, and Fromm

PSYC 370 Fall 2012 Book Notes: Chapter 7 Neo-Freudians: Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm HARRY STACK SULLIVAN INTERPERSONAL THEORY Personal History - Born in the winter of 1892 - He was the third and only surviving child, his siblings died in infancy - Grew up poor on a remote farm in rural New York - Was looked down on for his Irish Catholicism - Morbidly distant relationship with his father - Mother was protective - Won a New York State Scholarship to Cornell University, but was suspended for a term, but he was humiliated and never returned - Enoch Pratt Hospital in Maryland assistant psychiatrist for 8 years o Treated male schizophrenic patients no as insane but rather as a respected person o Therapist as a participant-observer an expert, but warm and tender and far from authoritarian - After he died, at 57 years old, in Paris many of his colleagues, staff, etc showed their hurt - Not an easy person to know he was anxious, lonely, eccentric, at once witty and warm, aloof, and capable of biting criticism American Psychiatry and Sociology - Sullivan was strong influenced by Adolph Meyer gave American psychiatry an independent and pragmatic parallel (pscyhobiology) to Freuds psychoanalysis - Was attracted to the ideas of the Chicago school sociology George Herbert Mead, W.I. Thomas, and Charles H. Cooley An Interpersonal View of Personality - We cannot imagine personality outside of interpersonal interaction - It is only in interaction with others that we can find individual personality - Definition of personality by Sullivan: Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations which characterize a human life o Personality is an illusion an abstraction from the commonalities observed in repeated interpersonal relations - Psychiatry: the study of phenomena that occur in interpersonal situations, in configurations made up of two or more people all but one of whom may be more or less completely illusory - Person-situation interactionist Parataxic Thinking and Distortion - Parataxic from the Greek word a placing beside - The assumption of causal connection between events that is not rationally examined or confirmed by others - Occurs when a patient attaches to his analyst attitudes and feelings based on an erroneous identification of the analyst with significant others in his experience The Self an ego concept of the self; also called self dynamism - Outstanding task of goal of self dynamism: pursuit of security the attaining of comfort and relief from the disapproval of others - Concept incorporates the conscience and ego ideal of the superego - Involved in the organization of all interpersonal behavior in the pursuit of security Needs also called satisfactions - Bodily needs, including sex (lust) **what motivates humans? Security and needs The Major Concepts of the Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry Tension the only kind of energy that engages in worm to reduce tension - The goal is a state of euphoria, of tensionless bliss, an end state best approximated in deep, dreamless sleep - Two sources of tension (1) the needs of the body, and (2) anxiety o Are aroused when bodily needs must be met psychochemical needs for sustenance including oxygen, warmth, sleep, and sex o Anxiety aroused by endangered security; is the fear of disapproval Dynamisms a relatively enduring configuration of energy which manifests itself in characterizable processes in interpersonal relations - a process of energy transformation, of turning physical energy into thought, feeling, and behavior - Basic unit of personality - Shares some off the attributes of the everyday concept of habits, but are different because dynamisms are responsible for the organization and channeling of energy into behavior - They emerge only out of interactions between one persona and another or others, through various interpersonal situations, they are made evident in interpersonal relations Self dynamism also called the self system; is at the absolute center of personality organization and interpersonal relations - Protects the person from threat to security - Begins to develop in infancy with the first awareness of approval and disapproval - As the child develops, the self dynamism becomes more and more adept at forestalling and deflecting anxiety - Capable of two process that contend with anxiety (1) dissociation, and (2) selective inattention o Selective inattention directing attention away from experiences (sounds, sights, words, ideas) that carry an anxious meaning o Dissociation anxiety laden experiences are denied, excluded from awareness May be expressed in dreams, fantasies, and actions that other people notice but are unnoticed by the person dissociating with them i.e. a characteristic tendency to apologize Sub dynamisms - Hate dynamism organizes hatred and targets it - Paranoid dynamism rooted in (1) awareness of inferiority of some kind, which then necessitates (2) a transfer of blame onto others - Genital lust dynamism can be dissociated at grave risk to effective living, and in most people cannot be dissociated at allThree Cognitive Modes 1. Prototaxic thought from the Greek proto which means first o A kind of undifferentiated stream of consciousness, an extreme version of the flow of thought o Raw, moment-by-moment sensation, without organization or connection o The infant is not yet able to make the distinction between me and not-me o This may occur in the most profoundly disturbed schizophrenic 2. Parataxic from the Greek, meaning to carry alongside o It is as if associations were conditioned without the intervention of mind o Associations are not linked logically and are likely to be perceived causal connections between events that have simply occurred sequentially and have no necessary relationship o e.g. when a baby cries as a signal and, without awareness of what they're doing, summon their mothers o i.e. prejudices, superstitions o Reacting or thinking automatically o Anxiety situations will tend to make cognition parataxic since anxiety constricts attention and impairs the ability to think o Those who are neurotic are likely to experience this often o Extreme case: there is no testing of reality, no comparison with the experiences of others 3. Syntaxic from the Greek, meaning orderly management o Is logical, operational, and confirmable by the experiences of others consensually validated o Syntaxic th