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Harry Stack Sullivan (Sullivan 1953) outlined various developmental epochs in his book "The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry" (it is a little difficult to read, but I have put my analysis and interpretation after it):

  • What we have in our minds begins in experience, and experience for the purpose of this theory is held to occur in three modes which i shall set up, one of which is usually, but by no means certainly, restricted to human beings. These modes are the prototaxic, the parataxic, and the syntaxic. I shall offer the thesis that these modes are primarily matters of 'inner' elaboration of events. The mode which is easiest to discuss is relatively uncommon--experience in the syntaxic mode; the one about which something can be known, but which is harder to discuss, is experience in the parataxic mode; and the one which is ordinarily capable of any formulation, and therefor of any discussion, is experience in the prototaxic or primitive mode. The difference in thses modes lies in the extent and the character of the elaboration that one's contact with events has undergone. (p. 28-29)
  • The prototaxic mode, which seems to be the rough basis of memory, is the crudest-shall I say-the simplest, the earliest, and probably the most abundant mode of experience. Sentience, in the experimental sense, presumably relates to much of what I mean by the prototaxic mode. The prototaxic, at least in the very early months of life, may be regarded as the discrete series of momentary states of the sensitive organism, with special reference to the zones of interaction with the environment. By the term, sensitive, I attempt to bring into your conception all of those channels for being aware of significant events--from the tactile organs, in, say, my buttocks, which are apprising me that this is a chair and I have sat in it about long enough, to all sorts of internunciatory sensitivities which have been developed in meeting my needs in the process of living. It is as if everything that is sensitive and centrally represented were an indefinite, but very greatly abundant, luminous switchboard; and the pattern of light which would show on that switchboard in any discrete experience is the basic prototaxic experience itself, if you follow me. This hint may suggest to you that I presume from the beginning until the end of life we undergo a succession of discrete patterns of the momentary state of the organism, which implies not that other organisms are impinging on it, but certainly that the events of other organisms are moving toward or actually effecting a change in this momentary state. (p. 29)
  • This is just another way of saying that absolute euphoria and absolute tension are constructs which are useful in thought but which do not occur in nature. These absolutes are approached at times, but almost all of living is perhaps rather near the middle of the trail, that is, there is some tension, and to that extent the level of euphoria is not as high as it could be. (p. 35)
  • From the standpoint of the infants prototaxtic experience, this crying, insofar as it evokes tender behavior by the mothering one, is adequate and appropriate action by the infant to remove or escape fear-provoking dangers. Crying thus comes to be differentiated as action appropriate to accomplish the foreseen relief of fear. (p. 53)
  • Thus the juvenile era is the time when the world begins to be really complicated by the presence of other people.(p. 232)
  • This giving up of the ideas and operations of childhood comes about through the increasing power of the self-system to control focal awareness. And this in turn comes about because of the very difficult, crude, critical reaction of other juveniles, and because of the relatively formulable and predictable manifestations of adult authority. In other words, the juvenile has extraordinary opportunity to learn a great deal about security operations, to learn ways of being free from anxiety, in terms of comparatively understandable sanctions and their violations. (p. 233)
  • I would guess that each of the outstanding achievements of the developmental eras that I have discussed will be outstandingly manifest in the mature personality. The last of these great developments is the appearance and growth of the need for intimacy- for collaboration with at least one other, preferably more others, and in this collaboration there is a very striking feature of a very lively sensitivity to the needs of the other and to the interpersonal security or absence of anxiety in the other. Thus we can certainly extrapolate from what we know that the mature, insofar as nothing of great importance collides, will be quite sympathetically understanding of the limitations, interests, possibilities, anxieties, and so on of those among whom they move or with whom they deal. (p. 310)

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Source:  OpenStax, Emotion, cognition, and social interaction - information from psychology and new ideas topics self help. OpenStax CNX. Jul 11, 2016 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10403/1.71
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