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Interpersonal psychoanalysis is based on the theories of American psychiatrist 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.cite-ref-1[1]cite-ref-2[2]

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.cite-ref-3[3]

• Sullivan and the neo-Freudians

• Selective inattention

• Personifications

• Criticism

• See also

• References

• Further reading

Along with other neo-Freudian practitioners of interpersonal psychoanalysis, such as Horney, Fromm, Thompson and Fromm-Reichman, Sullivan repudiated Freudian drive theory.cite-ref-4[4]

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.cite-ref-5[5]

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.cite-ref-6[6]

Both defences as used by patients may be usefully identified by the analyst through examination of his/her countertransference.cite-ref-7[7]

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.cite-ref-8[8]

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 and projective identification in orthodox psychoanalysis.cite-ref-9[9] As with the latter, parataxic distortion can, if identified by the analyst, prove fruitful clues to the nature of the patient's inner world.cite-ref-10[10]

Sullivan has been criticised for inventing (sometimes opaque) neologisms for established psychoanalytic concepts, to claim a perhaps spurious intellectual independence.cite-ref-11[11]

• Elephant in the room

• Interpersonal psychotherapy

• Intersubjective psychoanalysis

• Family therapy

• Relational psychoanalysis

• Relationship counseling

• Transactional analysis

cite-note-11. ↑ Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: Norton.

cite-note-22. ↑ Evans, F. Barton (1996). Harry Stack Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory and Psychotherapy. London: Routledge.

cite-note-33. ↑ Arthur H. Feiner, Interpersonal Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Relevance (2000) p. 22-6 and p. 44

cite-note-44. ↑ Paul Brinich/Christopher Shelley, The Self and Personality Structure (Buckingham 2002) p. 65

cite-note-55. ↑ Brinich, Self p. 64

cite-note-66. ↑ A. & J. Rosen, Frozen Dreams (2005) p. 108 and 115

cite-note-77. ↑ Rosen, p. 104

cite-note-88. ↑ Paul Brinich/Christopher Shelley, The Self and Personality Structure (Buckingham 2002) p. 65

cite-note-99. ↑ Brinich, Self p. 65

cite-note-1010. ↑ S. R. Welt/W. G. Herron, Narcissism and the Psychotherapist (1990) p. 121-2

cite-note-1111. ↑ B. F. Evans, in Brinich, Self p. 65

• Curtis, R. C. & Hirsch, I. (2003). Relational Approaches to Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. In Gurman, A. G. & Messer, S. B. Essential Psychotherapies. NY: Guilford.

• Curtis, R. C. (2008). Desire, Self, Mind & the Psychotherapies. Unifying Psychological Science and Psychoanalysis. Lanham, MD & New York: Jason Aronson.

• D. B. Stern/C. H. Mann eds., Pioneers of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis (1995)