biography
| name: |
Sullivan, Harry Stack
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1892–1949)
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| biography:
| Psychiatrist, born in Norwich, New York, USA. In 1922 he began working at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC, a major centre for psychiatry. While there he became aware of the therapeutic effects of psychiatric interviews. He moved to Baltimore and worked and taught at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital (1923–31), coming under the influence of Adolph Meyer at Johns Hopkins. In 1932 he moved to New York City to set up his clinical practice, but he continued to teach at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (1933–43), Yale, and at the Georgetown School of Medicine. Although influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, he believed that ‘personality’ only has meaning in the context of cultural patterns and interpersonal relations, and that psychiatry is the study of those relations. He saw mental illnesses as problem-solving efforts that could lead to greater emotional integration, and demonstrated, for instance, that even severe schizophrenics display symbol activity that is human and therefore understandable. He was the first editor of Psychiatry (1938–49) and wrote Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry (1947). After World War 2, he applied his theories to understanding international relations, but the Sullivanians never gained the status that he had hoped for. |
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