Critical Figures in Development of the Interpersonal Circumplex

Harry Stack Sullivan: personality is “nothing more (or less) than the patterned regularities that may be observed in an individual’s relations with other persons, who may be real in the sense of actually being present, real but absent and hence ‘personified’, or [even] ‘illusory” (Carson, 1969)

Kaiser Foundation Group (1950s): University of California faculty member Coffey and his graduate students, Freedman, Leary, and Ossorio, classifying behavior of group psychotherapy participants and later psychiatric patients

managerial-autocratic

responsible-hypernormal(psychosomatic)

cooperative-overconventional

docile-dependent

self-effacing-masochistic

rebellious-distrustful

aggressive-sadistic

competitive-narcissistic

abc

def

ghi j

klmn

op

beh

response

pathology

Principles of Interpersonal Theory

1. Complementarity. Within the circumplex, interpersonal interactions “fit” when there is reciprocity (vertical) and correspondence (horizontal). Complementary interactions are not necessarily healthy, but they satisfy people’s needs for interactions that fit their self-definitions and interpersonal habits.

2. Extremity. Abnormal or disordered behavior is an exaggeration of normal, adaptive behavior.

3. Interpersonal habits are thought to come from IPIR (Important People or their Internal Representations) through copy processes:

identification: do unto others as has been done unto yourecapitulation: continue in a complementary way to the IPIRintrojection: do unto others as you would have done unto you

Dominance/powerAgencyStatusExtraversion

AffiliationCommunionLoveAgreeableness

Equivalent trait and resource terms

S: Status and LoveO: Love

S: Status and LoveO: Neither

S: StatusO: Neither

S: NeitherO: Neither

S: NeitherO: Status

S: NeitherO: Status and Love

S: LoveO: Status and Love

S: Status and LoveO: Status and Love

Resource exchange theory