Interpersonal psychoanalysis is based on the theories of American

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their ...

Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949). Sullivan believed that the details of a patient's interpersonal interactions with others can provide insight into the causes and cures of

mental disorder A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

. Current practitioners stress such features as the detailed description of clinical experience, the mutuality of the interpersonal process, and the not-knowing of the analyst.

Sullivan and the neo-Freudians

Along with other neo-Freudian practitioners of interpersonal psychoanalysis, such as

Horney Horney is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Amanda Horney (1857–1953), Swedish politician * Brigitte Horney (1911–1988), German actress * Jane Horney (1918–1945), Swedish woman, believed to have spied in Denmark for the be ...

Fromm Fromm is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Eric Fromm (born 1958), American former tennis player * Erich Fromm (1900–1980), German-American Jewish psychologist and humanistic philosopher * Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1889–1957), ...

, Thompson and Fromm-Reichman, Sullivan repudiated Freudian drive theory. They, like Sullivan, also shared the interdisciplinary emphasis that was to be an important part of the legacy of interpersonal psychoanalysis, influencing counsellors, clergymen, social workers and more.

Selective inattention

Sullivan proposed that patients could keep certain aspects or components of their interpersonal relationships out of their awareness by a psychological behavior described as selective inattention - a term that has to a degree passed into common usage. A defence mechanism that functions prior to psychological repression, and acts by way of blocking all notice of the threat in question, selective inattention can also be accompanied by selective non-participation. Both defences as used by patients may be usefully identified by the analyst through examination of his/her countertransference.

Personifications

Sullivan emphasized that psychotherapists' analyses should focus on patients' relationships and personal interactions in order to obtain knowledge of what he called personifications – one's internalised views of self and others, one's internal schemata. Such analyses would consist of detailed questioning regarding moment-to-moment personal interactions, even including those with the analyst himself. Personifications can form the basis for what Sullivan called parataxic distortions of the interpersonal field – distortions similar to those described as the products of

transference Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from ...

and projective identification in orthodox psychoanalysis. As with the latter, parataxic distortion can, if identified by the analyst, prove fruitful clues to the nature of the patient's inner world.

Criticism

Sullivan has been criticised for inventing (sometimes opaque) neologisms for established psychoanalytic concepts, to claim a perhaps spurious intellectual independence.B. F. Evans, in Brinich, ''Self'' p. 65

References

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Sullivan and the neo-Freudians

Selective inattention

Personifications

Criticism

See also

References

Further reading