Introduction

Harry Stack Sullivan, an American psychiatrist working in the 1930s and 1940s, was the founder and chief proponent of a branch of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic thinking called variously interpersonal psychiatry or interpersonal psychoanalysis. Along with Erich Fromm and Karen Horney, Sullivan is perhaps best known for his social psychologically based critique of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic drive theory. Challenging the central role of infantile sexual drives in Freud’s theory, Sullivan and other social psychoanalytic theorists emphasized the role of culture and society as a primary determinant of personality development and psychopathology. During the 1940s, these interpersonal theories, sometimes called the “Neo-Freudian theories,” greatly influenced psychoanalytic theory and practice, as evidenced by their inclusion in most survey books on psychoanalysis and personality theory. Yet, their acknowledged impact on current mainstream thinking in psychoanalysis has been minimal until recently.