Sullivan, Harry Stack

Related Category: Psychology and Psychiatry: Biographies

1892–1949, American psychiatrist, b. Norwich, N.Y., M.D. Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery, 1917. He was, along with his teacher William Alanson White, responsible for the extension of Freudian psychoanalysis to the treatment of patients with severe mental disorders, particularly schizophrenia. In his work on the subject of schizophrenics, Sullivan argued that such individuals were not incurable, and that cultural forces were largely responsible for their condition. In his dual role as head of the William Alanson White Foundation (1934–43) and of the Washington School of Psychiatry (1936–47), he had the collaboration of like-minded psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists in bringing his views to public and professional attention. His writings include Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry (1947, repr. 1966); Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry (ed. by H. S. Perry and M. L. Gawel, 1953, repr. 1968); Schizophrenia as a Human Process (1962, repr. 1974).

See biography by H. Perry (1982, repr. 1987); study by P. Mullahy (1970).