The Interpersonal Psychotherapy of Harry Stack Sullivan: Remembering the Legacy

Having recently celebrated the centennial of the commencing of Harry Stack Sullivan’s distinguished medical career (M.D., 1911), it seems appropriate that both a review of his life and work be brought before a forgetful public and to draw attention to the contribution he has made to contemporary psychotherapeutic practice as the “father of modern psychiatry” as some in the field have insistently claimed. The integration of the social scientific understanding of human relationships with sound psychiatric practice elevated Sullivan’s work to a whole new school of thought in which “interpersonal” psychotherapy became the beneficiary. Social science and medicine were collapsed into a theoretical system of thought that has contributed to a much more dynamic and organic understanding of social behaviour within the matrix of personal relationships and mental illness. Such is the contribution of Harry Stack Sullivan to the social sciences, to medicine, and particularly to psychotherapy.