0.3 Alfred adler and harry stack sullivan  (Page 33/37)

Discussion Question: Do you know anyone who demonstrates arrested development (someone who seems immature, especially in relationships)? Are you able to maintain a friendship with that person, or is the situation too stressful?

Final Notes on Harry Stack Sullivan

From his early days working with William Alanson White, Sullivan was particularly interested in the treatment of schizophrenia. One of the books published by the White Foundation was entitled Schizophrenia as a Human Process (Sullivan, 1962), in which his longtime friend Clara Thompson described him as having a “genuine liking and respect” for his patients. Later the White Foundation published a series of seminars Sullivan offered to the psychiatric residents at Sheppard Pratt, as well as members of the Chestnut Lodge and the Washington School of Psychiatry, on the treatment of a young, male schizophrenic. The text includes commentary by others some 25 years after the seminar (see Kvarnes&Parloff, 1976).

Like Alfred and Kurt Adler, Sullivan recognized the difficulty of treating psychotic patients. The prognosis, in Sullivan’s opinion, depends to a large extent upon the patient’s history of successful interpersonal relationships:

…let us consider the empirical fact that the schizophrenia which appears in the form of a sudden dramatic onset is usually considered to have a more favorable prognosis than the schizophrenia with more gradual onset. But in those cases of sudden onset in which satisfactory experience with significant persons in the past is totally lacking, the patient may be practically beyond redemption; he may manifest empirically trustworthy capacity for recovery to the extent of making excellent institutional recovery; but the psychiatrist is daft who expects that he can put the patient out into the world without prompt relapse. (pg. 197; Sullivan, 1956)

Returning to Sullivan’s basic concept of personality, he offered the following definition:

Personality is the relatively enduring configuration of life-processes characterizing all of the person’s total activity pertaining to such other persons, real or fantastic, as become from time to relevant factors in his total situations. (pg. 47; Sullivan, 1972)

While this definition is rather sweeping in its coverage, it remains focused on interpersonal relationships. According to Thompson, Sullivan was very serious about his own relationships:

The quality of his friendship showed the same genuineness and tolerance so characteristic of his relation to patients. He was slow in making friends. He tested them for a long time…Once a person had passed the test he could count on Harry for absolute loyalty. No matter what your mistakes - and he might point them out to you privately - before the world he was on your side…He had a characteristic phrase when parting form a friend - “God keep you.” (pg. xxxiv; Clara Thompson in Sullivan, 1962)

Personality Theory in Real Life: Achieving Athletic Excellence

Despite Physical Challenges

Adler’s studies on inferiority began with physical problems, what he called organ inferiority (Adler, 1917). Most students of Adler look past that medical beginning, and focus instead on the psychological inferiorities that children experience during their development. However, there are many people with organ inferiority, or what we more commonly refer to as disabilities, handicaps, or “challenges.” There may be some debate as to which term is preferred, but since the phrase “politically correct” is itself a contradiction in terms, I will use the terms disability and handicap as presented in Warren Rule’s book Lifestyle Counseling for Adjustment to Disability (Rule, 1984). In his summary of previous research, Rule adopts the definition of a disability as a “relatively severe chronic impairment of function” that occurs as the result of a congenital defect, disease, or an accident. Accordingly, disability refers to actual physical, mental, or emotional impairments that become a handicap only if they cause lowered self-assessment, reduced activity, or limited opportunities. When disabilities become a handicap, they can affect the individual’s entire style of life. Thus, Rule brought together a group of therapists trained in Individual Psychology, and published the aforementioned book on using lifestyle counseling for people with disabilities that have led to handicaps.