ABSTRACT

In Sullivan’s developmental model the self system is central to each person’s personality. The self system involves the following considerations: 1, personality traits coalesce around the person’s self esteem; 2, anxiety results primarily from social interactions; and 3, the unconscious depends upon the individual social context. Central to the self-system is the concept of dynamism. Sullivan believed that the ultimate reality in the universe is energy, that all material objects are manifestations of energy and that all activity represents the dynamic or kinetic aspect of energy. A doctrine of force, which has as its underpinning energy, is naturally a conception of a dynamism of the universe. The “self-system”, the anti-anxiety system, is a secondary dynamism. While it does not have any particular zone of interaction, any particular physiological apparatus behind it, it literally uses all the zones of interaction and all physiological apparatus that are integrative and meaningful from the interpersonal standpoint.