Chapter 8 a Notes Flashcards
Overview of Sullivan Interpersonal Theory
people develop their personality within a social context
knowledge of human personality can be gained only through the scientific study of interpersonal relations.
healthy development when they are able to experience both intimacy and lust toward the same other person
Tensions
Like Freud and Jung, Sullivan (1953b) saw personality as an energy system. Energy can exist either as tension (potentiality for action) or as actions themselves (energy transformations )
Energy transformations:
transform tensions into either covert or overt behaviors and are aimed at satisfying needs and reducing anxiety.
Tension
is a potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness
two types of tensions: needs and anxiety
Needs
The most basic interpersonal need is tenderness and requires 2 people
Anxiety
A second type of tension, anxiety, differs from tensions of needs in that it is disjunctive,
is more diffuse and vague, and calls forth no consistent actions for its relief.
Because all mothers have some
amount of anxiety while caring for their babies, all infants will become anxious to
some degree.
anxiety produces behaviors that
(1) prevent people from learning from
their mistakes,
(2) keep people pursuing a childish wish for security, and (3) generally
ensure that people will not learn from their experiences
Energy Transformations
Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt or covert, are called energy
transformations.
Dynamisms
Energy transformations become organized as typical behavior patterns that characterize
a person throughout a lifetime. Sullivan (1953b) called these behavior patterns
Dynamisms
Malevolence
Malevolence is the disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred, characterized by
the feeling of living among one’s enemies
Malevolent actions often take the form of timidity, mischievousness, cruelty, or other kinds of asocial or antisocial behavior
Intimacy
a close interpersonal relationship between two people who are more or less
of equal status.
not be confused with sexual interest. In fact, it develops
prior to puberty,
Lust
isolating tendency, requiring no other person for its satisfaction.
Self-System
Consistent pattern of behaviors that maintains people’s interpersonal security by protecting
them from anxiety.
As the self-system develops, people begin to form a consistent image of themselves
Dissociation
impulses, desires, and needs that a person refuses to
allow into awareness.
selective inattention
refusal to see those things that we do not wish to see.
Personifications
people acquire certain images of themselves and others called personifications,
Bad-Mother, Good-Mother
grows out of the infant’s experiences with the bad-nipple: that is, the nipple that does not satisfy
hunger needs.
the infant’s vague representation of not being properly fed
Me Personifications
During mid-infancy a child acquires three me personifications (bad-me, good-me,
and not-me)
bad-me
personification is fashioned
from experiences of punishment and disapproval that infants receive from their
mothering one.
The good-me
personification results from infants’ experiences with reward and
approval. Infants feel good about themselves when they perceive their mother’s expressions
of tenderness. Such experiences diminish anxiety and foster the good-me
Personification
not-me
severe anxiety, however, may cause an infant to form the
and to either dissociate or selectively inattend experiences related
to that anxiety. An infant denies these experiences to the me image so that they
become part of the not-me personification.
Eidetic Personifications
imaginary friends that many children invent in
order to protect their self-esteem.
not limited to children; most adults see
fictitious traits in other people.
Levels of Cognition
prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic.
Prototaxic Level
Primitive, presymbolic,
undifferentiated mode of experience that cannot be
communicated to others.
Parataxic Level
illogical belief that a cause-and-effect relationship exists between two events in
close temporal proximity. However, uttering the word “please” does not, by itself,
cause the candy to appear.
Syntaxic Level
consensually validated and that can be symbolically communicated
take place on a syntaxic level. Consensually validated experiences are those
on whose meaning two or more persons agree. Words, for example, are consensually
validated because different people more or less agree on their meaning.
Adult experience takes place on all three levels.
epochs or stages of development
seven : read the chapters
Psychological Disorders
all psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and
can be understood only with reference to the patient’s social environment
2 kinds if schizophrenia
organic - beyond his control and the one that arises from situational factors. He was into the latter.
Psychotherapy
therapist serves as a participant
Observer
he concentrated his efforts on answering three continuing questions
what is the patient saying to me? How can I best put into words what I wish
to say to the patient? What is the general pattern of communication between us?
