Chapter 8 a Notes

Question 1

Overview of Sullivan Interpersonal Theory

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Tensions

Answer 2

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 )

Question 3

Energy transformations:

Answer 3

transform tensions into either covert or overt behaviors and are aimed at satisfying needs and reducing anxiety.

Question 4

Tension

Answer 4

is a potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness

two types of tensions: needs and anxiety

Question 5

Needs

Answer 5

The most basic interpersonal need is tenderness and requires 2 people

Question 6

Anxiety

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

anxiety produces behaviors that

Answer 7

(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

Question 8

Energy Transformations

Answer 8

Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt or covert, are called energy
transformations.

Question 9

Dynamisms

Answer 9

Energy transformations become organized as typical behavior patterns that characterize
a person throughout a lifetime. Sullivan (1953b) called these behavior patterns
Dynamisms

Question 10

Malevolence

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Intimacy

Answer 11

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,

Question 12

Lust

Answer 12

isolating tendency, requiring no other person for its satisfaction.

Question 13

Self-System

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Dissociation

Answer 14

impulses, desires, and needs that a person refuses to

allow into awareness.

Question 15

selective inattention

Answer 15

refusal to see those things that we do not wish to see.

Question 16

Personifications

Answer 16

people acquire certain images of themselves and others called personifications,

Question 17

Bad-Mother, Good-Mother

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Me Personifications

Answer 18

During mid-infancy a child acquires three me personifications (bad-me, good-me,
and not-me)

Question 19

bad-me

Answer 19

personification is fashioned
from experiences of punishment and disapproval that infants receive from their
mothering one.

Question 20

The good-me

Answer 20

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

Question 21

not-me

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

Eidetic Personifications

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Levels of Cognition

Answer 23

prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic.

Question 24

Prototaxic Level

Answer 24

Primitive, presymbolic,
undifferentiated mode of experience that cannot be
communicated to others.

Question 25

Parataxic Level

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

Syntaxic Level

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

epochs or stages of development

Answer 27

seven : read the chapters

Question 28

Psychological Disorders

Answer 28

all psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and

can be understood only with reference to the patient’s social environment

Question 29

2 kinds if schizophrenia

Answer 29

organic - beyond his control and the one that arises from situational factors. He was into the latter.

Question 30

Psychotherapy

Answer 30

therapist serves as a participant

Observer

Question 31

he concentrated his efforts on answering three continuing questions

Answer 31

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?