ABSTRACT
The interactive or interpersonal approach to psychotherapy derives from the work of the neo-Freudians and in particular Harry Stack Sullivan (1953). Sullivan believed that an individual’s history influences every moment of his life, because it provides a dynamic structure and definition of his experiences. He saw anxiety as arising from threats to an individual’s self-esteem. The individual uses well-tried defences to deal with these threats. Stack Sullivan did not agree with Freud’s idea that the basic personality structure was laid down in early childhood: rather he felt it developed, through interaction with significant others, right through to adulthood and was therefore open to change. A person’s psychological growth, then, depends on a concept of the self which is largely based on how a person experiences himself in relation to others (see Ratigan and Aveline, 1988:47).
