ABSTRACT
In this final chapter, it is only appropriate to come full circle back to the theme which runs throughout this book and throughout Sullivan’s work-the relationship between the problems of the person and the problems of society. Along with Fromm (1941, 1947, 1955), Sullivan’s theory of personality was fundamentally social psychological, elucidating how the forces of society affected the person and how the processes of the person (e.g. anxiety and parataxic distortion) were manifested in the problems of society. Sullivan’s deep understanding of the impact of social forces, down to the minute interactions between the mother and the child, was interwoven throughout his ideas about personality, mental illness, and psychotherapy. Sullivan’s achievement was remarkable and almost incomprehensible. This quintessential loner and social outsider grew up in a parochial rural community, with a very troubled adolescence and young adulthood and an undistinguished academic and early work career, only to emerge at age thirty as a psychiatrist with revolutionary ideas about the relation between the person and society. Rather than be crushed by the circumstances of his early life, Sullivan transformed his unfortunate personal experiences into becoming a penetrating observer and social critic who dared to explore taboo and destructive social forces of repressive sexual attitudes, antisemitism, racism, and international conflict.
