Self System

Fundamentals of Sullivan's Self System Framework

Self refers to a person’s self-image or “who we mean when we say ‘I’”. It is a composite of the “reflected appraisals” of significant others.— (Sullivan, 1940)

Sullivan used the notion “personification of the self” to denote the contents of one’s own self-image. He proposed the sense of self, or self system, begins to evolve during the first year of life as a consequence of interpersonal experiences of social approval and disapproval between child and mother.

These instances of social evaluation arouse anxiety in the child, who soon begins to use anxiety as a tool to apprehend and distinguish among stimuli that have produced anxiety in the past (i.e., threatening interpersonal situations, the inadvertent expression of one’s own disapproved-of personal attributes or behaviors, etc.).

The self system makes use of anxiety for two related purposes:

• first, to select for special attention aspects of experience that will most enhance feelings of interpersonal security;
• and second, to exclude from awareness anything that would challenge security.

This concept of interpersonal security is a particularly significant one in interpersonal theory and has a particular technical meaning. Just as person may be said to seek satisfaction in response to experiencing a given need, so the person seeks security in response to the experience of anxiety.

Sullivan’s self system may be described as “two-edged sword” because it was created negatively to avoid anxiety and positively to gain satisfaction. In this way, the infant is interacting with the environment, and particularly the mothering one, establishing a set of interrelated schemes for achieving such satisfaction. It is this set of schemes which begins to constitute the infant’s self system or personality. Unlike the soul, the self system is constantly gaining in complexity as the individual develops in ongoing social situations.

As a result of early interaction, the self system acquires three main components: the “good me,” the “bad me,” and the “non-me”. See table below.

Sullivan applied the word “mother” in describing the early interactions of infants, but the mothering person might not be the biological parent or even female. It is the primary nurturer of the child. A mother who is warm and nurturing gives her child a feeling of acceptance so that he experiences the self as the “good.” A tense, rejecting mother gives the child a feeling of being a “bad me.”

Consequently, when there are few affectionate gestures from the mother, the child perceives the self as more bad than good; good self-appraisals are lost and bad self-appraisals dominate. And when the mother uses forbidding or disapproving gestures against certain activities of the child, such as thumbsucking or genital exploration, the effect is to separate or dissociate the genital and oral regions from the child’s sense of what is good and acceptable. Sometimes a child will isolate or separate these forbidden regions and behaviors, disown them, and make them part of the “non-me” aspect of the self system.

Sullivan described an undesirable process called malevolent transformation in which a child who feels “bad” sees badness in everyone else. Because the child is so aware of being bad, the only way for him to feel human like everyone else is to search for the worst in others.

Thus, the child is rarely disappointed; the result is that he believes the world is full of enemies. This line of reasoning helps explain suspiciousness and paranoid thinking as outcomes of low self-esteem. Another implication of this theory is that self-love and self-respect are necessary if one is to be able to love and respect others.

Communication between mother and child occurs through a process called empathy, which allows one person to understand and identify with the feelings of another. When the mother feels anxiety, it is transmitted by empathy to the child. Thus, for Sullivan, feelings of anxiety arise out of dependency on others for security. Generated first in the interaction between mother and child, anxiety becomes part of every subsequent interpersonal transaction and is the primary cause of problematic relationships and difficulties in living.

Modes of Experience

Sullivan’s conceptualization of experience included the inner meaning of everything people live through or undergo. He described three distinct modes of experience: prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic.

1. Prototaxic
   The prototaxic mode of experience is that known to the very young infant. It is a continuous flow with no differentiation; there are no connections, no causes or effects, and there is no awareness of self as distinct from others. The separate world does not exist; the infant is the entire world.
2. Parataxic
   The parataxic mode of experience is broken, but the fragments are unconnected and unrelated. Parataxic experience belongs only to the person involved in it, and its uniqueness cannot be shared with others. Older infants, many children, and some creative people engage in parataxic experience. At times of acute mental disturbance the subjective experience of a client may become a parataxic distortion.
3. Syntaxic
   Syntaxic experience can be validated consensually by means of language and symbols. In syntaxic experience, meanings and principles can be shared with others and can be accepted by others as true or untrue based on common understanding. In general, syntaxic experience is accepted as valid by a group (Sullivan 1953).

Elaboration of the three modes of experience led Sullivan to describe several strategies people use to handle interpersonal transactions.

• Consensual validation is an efficient strategy that involves measuring one’s perceptions against the perceptions of others in order to reduce any distortions.
• Selective inattention is the screening out of an anxiety provoking content so that it can be overlooked or forgotten. Thus, selective inattention actually operates to prevent consensual validation of perceptions and interpretations. Persons denying the significance of a serious illness often resort to the anxiety reducing technique of selective inattention.
• Focal awareness is a means by which people see and hear what they want to and emphasize content that is reassuring. The parents of developmentally impaired children will often use focal awareness and direct all their attention to small signs of progress, thereby fostering unrealistic hopes (Griffin 1980).

Developmental Stages

Like FreudOpens in new window and EriksonOpens in new window, Sullivan described a developmental progression of stages. The table below shows the developmental stages.