Chapter Extra- Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory Flashcards
This theory emphasizes the importance of various developmental stages-infancy, childhood, the juvenile era, preadolescence, early adolescence, late adolescence, and adulthood. Healthy human development rests on a persons ability to establish intimacy with another person, but unfortunately, anxiety can interfere with satisfying interpersonal relations at any age.
Sullivans interpersonal theory
Sullivan was a an immature and isolated a child, but nevertheless formed one close interpersonal relationship with a boy that was _____ years older than himself. Many thought he was a homosexual.
Five
Sullivan gained a reputation working at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital while working with these type of patients:
Schizophrenic patients
Sullivan saw personality as an _____ system
Energy
According to Sullivan, energy can exist either as _______, or potentiality for action, or as actions themselves also known as _____ ________.
Tension, energy transformations
These transform tensions into either covert or overt behaviors and are aimed at satisfying needs and reducing anxiety
Energy transformations
This is a potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness
Tension
Sullivan recognized two types of tensions:
Needs and anxiety. Needs usually resulting productive actions, whereas anxiety leads to nonproductive or disintegrative behaviors
According to Sullivan, needs can relate to either the general well-being of a person or to specific zones, such as the _____ or ______
Mouth or genitals
According to Sullivan, general needs can be either _______, such as food or oxygen (zonal), or they can be _________, such as tenderness and intimacy.
Physiological, interpersonal
Unlike some needs, tenderness requires actions from at least ___ people
Two
Unlike needs which are conjunctive and call for specific actions to reduce them, _____ is disjunctive and calls for no consistent action for itself. It is the chief disruptive force in interpersonal relations
Anxiety
All infants learn to be anxious through the ______ relationship that they have with their mothering one
Empathetic
A complete absence of anxiety and other tensions is called
Euphoria
Energy transformations become organized as typical behavior patterns that characterize a person throughout a lifetime, Sullivan called these behavior patterns
Dynamisms A term that means about the same as traits or habit patterns
According to Sullivan, dynamism’s are two major classes:
They may relate to specific zones of the body or to tensions
The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred, characterized by the feeling of living among one’s enemies.
Malevolence. Children who become malevolent have much difficulty giving and receiving tenderness or being intimate with other people
According to Sullivan, this is a conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal relationship between two people of equal status
Intimacy. Facilitates into personal development while decreasing both anxiety and loneliness
According to Sullivan, this dynamism is an isolating dynamism, it is a self centered need that can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate interpersonal relationship. Based solely on sexual gratification and requires no other person for its satisfaction
Lust
According to Sullivan, this is the most inclusive of all dynamism and is that pattern of behaviors that protects us against anxiety and maintains our interpersonal security. It is a conjunctive dynamism, but because it’s primary job is to protect the self from anxiety, it tends to stifle personality change
Self-system
According to Sullivan, experiences that are inconsistent with our self-system threaten our security and necessitate our use of ______ ______, which consist of behaviors designed to reduce interpersonal tensions
Security operations
Two important security operations according to Sullivan are:
Dissociation and selective in attention
According to Sullivan, this security operation includes those impulses, desires, and needs that a person refuses to allow into awareness
Dissociation
According to Sullivan, this security operation is a refusal to see those things that we do not wish to see. The control of focal awareness.
Selective inattention
According to Sullivan, people acquire certain images of self and others throughout the developmental stages, and he referred to the subjective perceptions as:
Personifications
The bad mother personification grows out of infants’ experiences with the nipple that does not satisfy their ______ needs
Hunger
Later, according to Sullivan, infants acquire a ____-______personification as they become mature enough to recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of their mothering one
Good-mother
According to Sullivan, during infancy children acquire three “me”personifications:
The bad-me, the good-me, the non-me
According to Sullivan, this me personification grows from experiences of punishment and disapproval
The bad-me
According to Sullivan, this me personification results from experiences with reward and approval
The good-me
According to Sullivan, this me personification allows a person to dissociate or selectively not attend to the experiences related to anxiety
The non-me
Unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that many children invent in order to protect their self-esteem
Eidetic personifications
Sullivan divided cognition into three levels or modes of experience:
Prototaxic, parataxic, syntaxic. Levels of cognition referred to ways of perceiving, imagining, and conceiving
According to Sullivan, experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others are called
Prototaxic. Newborn infants experience images mostly on this level, but adults to frequently have preverbal experiences that are momentary and incapable of being communicated
According to Sullivan, experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate others. Usually result when a person assumes A cause-and-effect relationship between two events that occur incidentally. Their meaning remains private, therefore they can be communicated to others only in a distorted fashion
Parataxic experiences
An illogical belief that a cause-and-effect relationship exists between two events in close temporal proximity
Parataxic distortion
Cording to Sullivan, these are experiences that are consensually validated and that can be symbolic we communicated. Those experiences on whose meaning two or more persons agree
Syntactic level experiences. Children becomes capable of syntaxic language at about 12 to 18 months of age when words begin to have the same meeting for them that they do for others
Sullivan saw interpersonal development as taking place over seven stages, from infancy to mature adult hood. Personality changes are most likely during ________ between stages
Transitions
According to Sullivan, this is the period from birth until the emergence of syntaxic language, a time when the child receives tenderness from the mothering one while also learning anxiety through and empathic linkage with the mother
Infancy
According to Sullivan, during infancy anxiety may increase to the point of care, but such terror is controlled by the built-in protections of _____ and ______ _______ that allow the baby to go to sleep even if they’re hungry
Apathy and somnolent detachment
Private language of infants that makes little or no sense to other people
Artistic language
According to Sullivan, this stage lasts from the beginning of syntaxic language until the need for playmates of equal status. The child’s primary interpersonal relationship continues to be with the mother, who is now differentiated from other persons who nurture the child
Childhood
According to Sullivan, this stage begins with the need for peers of equal status and continues until the child develops a need for an intimate relationship with a chum. At this time children should learn how to compete, compromise, and to cooperate. The three abilities, as well as an orientation toward living, help a child develop intimacy, a chief dynamism of the next developmental stage
Juvenile era
Accrding to Sullivan, this is perhaps the most crucial stage because mistakes made earlier can be corrected during this stage, but errors made during this stage are nearly impossible to overcome in later life. Spans the time from the need for a single best friend until puberty
Preadolescence. Children who do not learn intimacy during preadolescence have added difficulties relating to potential sexual partners during the later stages
According to Sullivan, with this stage comes the lust dynamism and the beginning of puberty. Development during this stage is ordinarily marked by a coexistence of intimacy with a single friend of the same gender and sexual interest in many persons of the opposite gender
Early adolescence
According to Sullivan, this stage may start anytime after about age 16, but psychologically it begins when a person is able to feel both intimacy and lust toward the same person. Characterized by a stable pattern of sexual activity and the growth of the syntaxic mode, as young people learn how to live in the adult world
Late adolescence
According to Sullivan, this stage is a time when a person establishes a stable relationship with a significant other person and develop a consistent pattern of viewing the world
Adulthood
Sullivan believe that all psychological disorders have an interpersonal origin and can be understood only with reference to the patients ____ environment
Social
Sullivan pioneered the notion of the therapist as a _____ _______, who establishes an interpersonal relationship with the patient. He was primarily concerned with understanding patients and helping them develop foresight, improve interpersonal relations, and restore their ability to operate mostly on a syntaxic level
Participant observer
Research stemming from Sullivans work on the pros and cons of chums for girls and boys found that:
Co-rumination is associated with better friendships for boys and girls, and also that co-rumination is associated with more depression or anxiety for girls, but not for boys. Rumination is the act of dwelling on a negative event or negative aspects of an otherwise neutral or even positive event.
What has the research found in relation to Sullivans notion of imaginary friends
There is evidence to support Sullivan’s theory that children who develop imaginary friends tend to have higher levels of creativity, imagination, and intelligence. Also, researchers have found support for Sullivans idea that children view imaginary friends as a source of nurturance, support and enjoyment, and that they help to model how real friendships should work. Having an imaginary friend is a normal, healthy experience.
Sullivan’s theory rates low in three areas
Falsifiability, it’s ability to generate research, parsimony
Sullivan’s theory rates about average in three areas
It’s capacity to organize knowledge, to guide action, and self consistency
Sullivans theory rate very high on social influences and very low on
Biological ones
Sullivan’s theory rates high on _______ determinants, average on free _____, optimism, and causality. It rates low on _______.
Unconscious, free choice, uniqueness
Sullivan evolved a theory of personality that emphasized the importance of interpersonal relationships although he had a ______ and _______ childhood
Lonely and isolated
