Conceptions Of Modern Psychiatry

"Psychiatry...is the study of processes that involve or go on between people. The field of psychiatry is the field of interpersonal relations, under any and all circumstances in which these relations exist." This is the thesis set forth by Harry Stack Sullivan in Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry--the book that first expressed the central ideas of his theory of personality. Through his development of the theory, he made not only a vital contribution in the treatment of mental disorder--in particular, schizophrenia--but he opened an entirely new approach to the study of human personality. In the view of many analysts, he made the most original contribution to psychiatry since Freud. Roll May has said: "As Freud was the prophet for our schizoid age--our age of unrelatedness, in which, beneath all the chatter of radio and newspapers and all the multitudes of 'contacts', people are often strangers to each other."

The central ideas making up Harry Stack Sullivan’s theory of personality find their first expression in this book. Here he set forth his view of psychiatry as the study of interpersonal relations. “Psychiatry,” he wrote, “is the study of processes that involve or go on between people. The field of psychiatry is the field of interpersonal relations under any and all circumstances in which these relations exist. A personality can never be isolated from the complex of interpersonal relations in which the person lives and has his being.” Through his development of the theory of interpersonal relations, Harry Stack Sullivan not only made a vital contribution on the treatment of mental disorder—in particular, schizophrenia—but he opened an entirely new approach to the study of human personality. “The core of Sullivan’s theory,” says Lloyd Frankenberg in the New York Times, “is that people, interacting, shape people....He has evolved an analytic method, for all its subtlety and elaboration, wonderfully coherent, organic and usable.” The influence of Harry Stack Sullivan has had a powerful impact. He has been called one of the half dozen truly great figures in American social psychology, one who has opened new horizons of research and, in the view of many analysist, made the most original contribution to psychiatry since Freud.

Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1955 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.

An impressive amount of work, experimental, statistical and "observa tional" or "phenomenological" has been done in psychiatry during the past 30 to 40 years. Although Sullivan's achievements have placed him in the first rank of psychiatry, some of the work done since he died in 1949 can be assimilated to enchance his achievements. For this reason, I enlisted the aid of Menachem Melinek, M.D., whose wide knowledge of re cent and contemporary psychiatric studies is admirably suited to the task of assimilating some of them to Sullivan's theories. PATRICK MULLAHY Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge with gratitude Mrs. Mari Hughes, formerly secretary, Department of Psychology, Manhattan College, for typing the original manuscript. Dr. Robert G. Kvarnes of the Washing ton School of Psychiatry, read the original manuscript and contributed several keen criticisms and suggestions for which we are grateful. We wish to express our thanks to the Department of Psychiatry, at Montefiore-North Central Bronx Hospitals for the support in preparing the final manuscript of the book. Robert Steinmuller, Director of Psychiatry at North Central Bronx Hospital was generous with his help. We would like as well to acknowledge the support of the Department of Psychiatry at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center and its Director of Psychiatry, Dr. Harvey Bluestone.

This volume sets forth the central ideas of Dr. Sullivan's theory of personality. His view of psychiatry as the study of interpersonal relations has opened an entirely new approach to the treatment of mental disorders and the study of human personality.