0.3 Alfred adler and harry stack sullivan  (Page 29/37)

Whereas Adler considered relationships to be an obvious consequence of social interest, the primary factor in Individual Psychology is the striving for superiority. Social interest and interpersonal relationships, of course, make healthy superiority possible. For Sullivan, however, it was the interpersonal relationships themselves that were paramount:

One achieves mental health to the extent that one becomes aware of one’s interpersonal relations …It is part of the framework that supports all explanations of what is going on, what might be going on, and what will presently be going on…It is the necessary formula to which everything must be assimilable, if it is therapy. (pg. 207; Sullivan, 1940)

Euphoria, Tension, and Security

Sullivan believed that we exist somewhere between the states of absolute euphoria and absolute tension . Absolute euphoria is a state of utter well-being, which, unfortunately, is not really possible. The closest we can come to experiencing absolute euphoria is in the deep sleep of a newborn infant. Tension is the alternative state to euphoria, and tension is very much a part of our lives. It arises from two sources: needs and anxiety . There are two basic types of needs: those that arise from actual biological needs (food, water, air, etc.), and those that are cultural or learned. In real life, however, these types of needs cannot be separated. An infant cannot satisfy its biological needs, it must be cared for. Thus, Sullivan talked routinely about a mothering need, which is a need for an intimate, interpersonal relationship. When the mother does indeed care for the infant, the infant experiences this as tenderness , and the infant develops an ongoing need for tenderness. Thus, through the need for a mother and the need for tenderness, the infant finds itself in a world in which it needs interpersonal relationships for continued survival and psychological development (Chapman&Chapman, 1980; Lundin, 1979; Mullahy&Melinek, 1983; Sullivan, 1940, 1953).

Anxiety is the result of real or imagined threats, and can be experienced by the infant or caused by an anxious mother. In either case, it can be particularly intense in an infant because they cannot specifically do anything about it. Furthermore, unlike biological needs that can be met quite specifically (e.g., a hungry child can be fed), how can anxiety be satisfied? The answer, according to Sullivan, is through the pursuit of interpersonal security . In other words, a sense of security, the alternative to anxiety, can be obtained only through relationships that provide the child with tenderness and empathy . Sullivan used the term empathy to describe “the peculiar emotional linkage that subtends the relationship of the infant with other significant people - the mother or the nurse” (pg. 17; Sullivan, 1940). Long before infants show any sense of understanding emotional expressions, they seem to be able to share in emotional feelings, through what Sullivan considered an innate capacity for empathy. Even an infant is not, however, merely a recipient of the relationships in which it is involved, it is an active and engaged person. Likewise, children do not simply wait and hope for security, they actively engage in thoughts and behaviors that Sullivan called security operations . Security operations serve to maintain our sense of self-esteem, or self-respect, and they often begin with an emphatic sense of “I.” Unfortunately, this leads to an odd paradox: the concept that we can have self-esteem without being in relationship with others: