Harry Stack Sullivan MD Papers, 1895-2019

Summary

Creator:
Sullivan, Harry Stack, 1892-1949
Abstract:
This collection contains the papers of Harry Stack Sullivan, who was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. The collection has 5 series: Lectures, Writings, and Publications; William Alanson White Institute and Washington School of Psychiatry; Psychiatry Journal; Biographical and Subject Files; and Audiovisual Materials and Scrapbooks.
Extent:
41 boxes 18.48 linear feet
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

This collection contains the papers of Harry Stack Sullivan, who was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. There are five series in this collection.

Lectures, Writings, and Publications: This series includes notebooks (both xeroxes and transcriptions), Chestnut Lodge lectures (1945-1946), Mary White Lectures (although there are no records or transcripts of lectures 2 and 29), Sullivan project materials, the first lectures series (“first sign of the first lecture in the Washington School series Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry”), the first advanced lectures, notes, manuscripts, and the Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry manuscript (which is largely handwritten). There are also materials on writings and publications, such as correspondence, drafts, and reviews on the Sullivan Case Seminars, Clinical Studies in Psychiatry, Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry, Personal Psychopathology, The Psychiatric Interview, and Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. This series includes copies of publications, which are primarily reprints from journals. Some information on the publications can also be found in the Biographical and Subject Files, such as contracts, permissions information, reviews, and correspondence.

William Alanson White Institute and Washington School of Psychiatry: This series contains minutes, by-laws, correspondence, reports, donations and financial information, programs, publicity, and The Psychiatric Interview chapters edited by Otto Will from the William Alanson White Institute and Washington School of Psychiatry.

Psychiatry Journal: These materials include correspondence, memorandums, financial and copyright information, indexes, reports, minutes, and publicity files from the Psychiatry Journal.

Biographical and Subject Files: These files include awards, correspondence, materials from and about James Sullivan and Dr. Sullivan’s mother, Sullivan Project documentation, and biographical information. There is also information on the publication of Sullivan’s writings by Helen Tepper Perry after his death, such as contracts, permissions information, reviews, and correspondence.

Audiovisual Materials and Scrapbooks: These materials include an audiocassette interview and transcription of Donald Burnham and Robert Cohen on Dr. Sullivan, newspaper clippings and photographs from Dr. Sullivan’s scrapbooks, and over one thousand SoundScriber discs.

Biographical / historical:

Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) was born in Norwich, New York and graduated from Smyrna High School as valedictorian at the age of sixteen. He entered Cornell University on a state scholarship, with the intention of majoring in physics, but he was suspended after his performance began to falter and he never returned. He entered the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery (later a part of Loyola University) in 1911 and graduated with a medical degree in 1917. He was first lieutenant in the Medical Corps during World War I, and while in Chicago he was also an industrial surgeon and, according to his own account, underwent 75 hours of psychoanalysis in the winter of 1916-1917.

He served as the United States Veterans’ liaison officer at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1922 to 1923, where he met William Alanson White, who was superintendent of the hospital. Afterwards, he went to Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, where he established a new type of ward for young male schizophrenics from 1923 to 1925 and was director of clinical research from 1925 to 1930. He studied patients suffering from schizophrenic disorders and became acquainted with Adolf Meyer while there. In Baltimore, he met and became friends with Clara M. Thompson, and during the same time period, he became an instructor at the University of Maryland’s Medical School in 1924 and an associate professor from 1925 to 1930.

He moved to New York in 1931 to enter private practice, where he resumed his association with the anthropologist Edward Sapir, whom he first met in Chicago in 1926; with Sapir and Harold Lasswell, Sullivan planned the establishment of the Washington School of Psychiatry and the journal Psychiatry. Sullivan led the Washington School of Psychiatry from 1936 to 1947 and was director of it from 1936 to 1949. In addition, he was one of the founders and the president of the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation from 1933 to 1943 and trustee of it from 1933 to 1949. He also co-founded and was co-editor of the Psychiatry journal from 1938 to 1945 and then was editor of it from 1946 to 1949.

With the approach of World War II, he returned to the Washington D.C. area and became the first William Alanson White Memorial Lecturer on Psychiatry and head of the department of Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1939, but resigned that same year. He served as a consultant on psychiatry to the director of the Selective Service System from 1940 to 1941 and then became medical adviser to the personnel section of the War Department General Staff and assisted the Army in setting up a screening system at the induction centers. From 1941 to 1949, he worked full time on teaching and research at the Washington School of Psychiatry. Although he was never on the staff of Chestnut Lodge, he visited there for seminars for two years, twice a week, and recorded 246 lectures in total, which are the basis of the seven volumes published later by Norton. In addition, he was associate editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry from 1924 to 1939 and fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, American Orthopsychiatric Association, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1927, James Inscoe, then fifteen, came to live with him. Sullivan described him as an ex-patient and adopted son, although this was never legally formalized. Inscoe lived with Sullivan until Sullivan’s death and served as his secretary. Sullivan had a heart attack in the 1930s and a near fatal case of subacute bacterial endocarditis in 1945, and at the time of his death in January 1949, he was working with the UNESCO Tensions Project. Sullivan died at the Ritz Hotel in Paris of a meningeal hemorrhage on his way home from an executive meeting in Amsterdam of the World Federation for Mental Health (which he helped establish), and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in a military and Catholic service.

His book Personal Psychopathology was written between 1929 to 1933 and introduced a new “system” of psychiatry; although it was not published at the time, it was privately circulated and considered important because of its original and provocative ideas. He initially considered himself a disciple of Sigmund Freud, but he challenged theories such as the classical concept of transference; in comparison, Sullivan concentrated on the theory of the self and its evolution and is known for his theory of interpersonal relations.

Before his death, most of his writings existed as articles in professional journals, with the exception of one monograph, Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry, which was published in 1947; it had originally appeared in the journal Psychiatry in 1940 and was republished in 1953. After his death, 3 books were put together from his unpublished lectures: The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry in 1953, The Psychiatric Interview in 1954, and Clinical Studies in Psychiatry in 1956. In 1972, Personal Psychopathology was published and based on a book manuscript prepared by Sullivan forty years earlier. In addition, two books of his selected papers were published; one was on his work at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital and entitled Schizophrenia as a Human Process in 1962 and the second book, The Fusion of Psychiatry and Social Science in 1964, was based on his later work; both works contained introductions and commentaries by Helen Swick Perry.

Acquisition information:
Donated by the Washington School of Psychiatry in 2024.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

There are no access restrictions on this material.

Terms of access:

Written permission must be obtained from the Oskar Diethelm Library and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

Location of this collection:
DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy and the Arts
Weill Cornell Medical College
525 East 68th Street, Box 140
New York, NY 10065, United States
Link to repository site
Contact:
212-746-3728