ABSTRACT

If an anxious parent has defenses, the child is impinged on by the defenses, not the parent's anxiety, unless one postulates an empathic secret in-touch ness with something deeply buried in the parent. If anxiety were that telepathic, bypassing semiotic communications, how possibly could a "self-system" protect the child? It would require a lead shield. I think that it is at this point that Sullivan waffles the issue. If it is the experience with the parent that is making the child anxious, then it is because there is something discordant in the experience-say, a mother who makes and breaks eye contact at the wrong frequency, too soon or too late, or fumbles breast feeding. The child then is anxious because something is really wrong and he cannot integrate it. If, on the o~her hand, the child is responding with panic to the parent's anxiety, regardless of the explicit message, then he has a readiness for anxiety and it is a drive, as much as libido or hunger. The child has an incipient terror that is contained, held in check, by the parent's empathic response. Then it is not interpersonal. "Drive" can be defined as:

Sullivan's anxiety seems closer to a drive than an interpersonal experience.