Chapter 2: Self As A Sign: Locating Peirce’s Semiotics in Sullivan’s Self-System

The theory of interpersonal psychoanalysis as developed by Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949) (1950, 1953a, 1953b, 1953c, 1938/1995) has profoundly shaped the contours of contemporary psychoanalysis. Specifically, his focus on understanding how real interpersonal events generate “difficulties in living” is a cornerstone of both interpersonal and relational theories (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Harris, 2011; Mitchell, 1986; Mitchell, 1988; Ortmeyer, 1995). Influenced by the intellectual climate of his time, Sullivan added insights from pragmatism, anthropology, and linguistic theory to his own training in psychiatry to explain how interpersonal relationships shape the development of individual personality and pathology (Green, 1962; Lincourt & Olczak, 1974,Lincourt & Olczak, 1979; Mitchell & Harris, 2004; Ortmeyer, 1995; Percy, 1972; Perry, 1987). His ideas laid the foundation for and anticipated many recent developments in psychoanalysis, such as the consideration of language as a form of action (Levenson, 1979/2005; 1983/2005), the importance of dissociation (Bromberg, 1998; Stern, 2003), the role of early interpersonal trauma (Putnam, 1990), ideas about the multiplicity of self-states (Bromberg, 1998; Stern, 2004), and working in the here-and-now (Ehrenberg, 1992).