Interpersonal psychoanalysis

Interpersonal psychoanalysis was first established and mainly contributed by Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949), an American psychiatrist. He thought that psychoanalytic analysis should focus on the early interactions of a patient in order to identify with present psychopathology. Interpersonal psychoanalysis is grounded on the theories of Sullivan, who thought that the details of a patient's interpersonal interactions with others can offer insight into the sources and cures of mental disorder.

The individual personality is formed and shaped by lifelong interactions, starting with caregivers in infancy. Mitchell and Black thought that his formulations were overtly disturbed with the progress of psychopathology and the response of the self in difficulties in living. Sullivan was particularly interested in the early experience of anxiety in infants.

Sullivan was particularly interested in the early experience of anxiety in infants. In the initial stages of infancy, children’s requirements are met by integrating tendencies, which are desires for satisfaction that are given on a mutual basis.

Sullivan projected that patients could keep definite characteristics or components of their interpersonal relationships out of their consciousness by a psychosomatic behavior described as selective inattention. The phrase has to a degree passed into common usage: '"Selective inattention".

Sullivan stressed that psychotherapists' analyses should focus on patients' relationships and personal interactions to obtain knowledge of affecting patterns and tendencies - personifications. Such analyses would consist of comprehensive questioning regarding minute-to-minute personal interactions, even including those with the analyst himself.

One of the essential techniques of the interpersonal psychoanalyst is to add to consciousness of the procedures of the self-system by asking questions and encouraging self-reflection, so that vital, rapid sequences can be pragmatic, understood, and, through understanding, and slowly altered. The interpersonal analyst also expends a great sum of time questioning into the past interactions of his patients.

The patient tries to illustrate the analyst into his characteristic forms of interaction.  Insight and understanding are also central factors for change in Sullivan’s interpersonal psychoanalysis. The more the patient realizes the workings of the self-system in its efforts to stay away from anxiety, the more effortlessly that patient can make different choices

Questions:

• How is interpersonal psychoanalysis useful?
• Does interpersonal psychoanalysis use the characteristics of interpersonal relationship?