Handbook of Interpersonal Psychology

Theory, Research, Assessment, and Therapeutic Interventions

Leonard M. Horowitz, Stephen Strack, Leonard M. Horowitz, Stephen Strack

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470471609
• eBook ISBN: 9780470881071
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychologie clinique

Modern interpersonal psychology is now at a point where recent advances need to be organized so that researchers, practitioners, and students can understand what is new, different, and state-of-the art. This field-defining volume examines the history of interpersonal psychology and explores influential theories of normal-abnormal behaviors, widely-used assessment measures, recent methodological advances, and current interpersonal strategies for changing problematic behaviors. Featuring original contributions from field luminaries including Aaron Pincus, John Clarkin, David Buss, Louis Castonguay, and Theodore Millon, this cutting-edge volume will appeal to academicians, professionals, and students interested in the study of normal and abnormal interpersonal behavior.

1

Introduction

Stephen Strack

Leonard M. Horowitz

Interpersonal psychology emerged as a significant academic discipline in the 1950s, when the field was dominated by behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Many researchers and practitioners at the time, dissatisfied with the extreme positions of those two schools of thought, sought an integrative alternative. In place of either doctrine, they looked for a more moderate position that was scientifically sound but also addressed internal states (e.g., interpersonal motives) as well as observable behavior. “Interpersonalists” distinguished themselves from their mainstream counterparts with their assumption that human behavior is best understood within the context of transactional causality and reciprocal influence: Persons A and B mutually and reciprocally influence each other, in that the behavior of each is both a response to and a stimulus for the other's behavior.

During the past 60 years thousands of research articles, chapters, and books have been published that address interpersonal processes in personality, social, and abnormal psychology, behavior in dyads and groups, relationship patterns, and psychotherapy. Old models of interpersonal behavior have been modified and new models have been developed. Especially important during the past decade has been the implementation of new research methods that capitalize on the latest developments in communication technology (e.g., low-cost video equipment, miniature cameras, hand-held computers, wireless networks, and the Internet), which has made it possible to study aspects of interpersonal behavior that were previously off limits. See Table 1.1 for a list of milestones in the evolution of the field.

Table 1.1 Some Milestones in the History of Interpersonal Psychology

Year(s)	Event(s)
1922–1930	Treating schizophrenics on a special ward at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Maryland, Harry Stack Sullivan develops his interpersonal theory of psychiatry.
1934	George Herbert Meade explains how individual personality and self-concept arise as a function of social processes in his monograph, Mind, Self, and Society.
1936	In Principles of Topological Psychology, Kurt Lewin describes behavior as a function of the individual's perceptive capacities in interaction with the dynamic forces that exist within specific environments.
	Sullivan helps found the Washington School of Psychiatry. The school becomes a forum for his work and attracts scholars from anthropology, political science, psychology, and sociology, including Ruth Benedict, Erick Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Karen Horney, and David and Margaret Rioch. Many of Sullivan's students make their own contributions to the budding field of interpersonal psychology.
1938–1945	The rise of Nazi Germany and World War II galvanize the interests of researchers and practitioners to study social and interpersonal processes, and to develop group treatments for soldiers suffering from “combat fatigue.”
1940	The first widely disseminated summary of Sullivan's interpersonal model is published as Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry.
1946	The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is founded in Britain as a charity concerned with studying group and organizational behavior, and the treatment of war casualties. Several key figures at the institute make seminal contributions to interpersonal psychology, including Wilfrid Bion, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein, and Ronald Laing.
1951	Professor Hubert Coffey's students at the University of California at Berkeley begin to publish the results of their cooperative studies on personality processes in group psychotherapy (Freedman, Leary, Ossorio, & Coffey, 1951).
1953	The first volumes in a series of posthumous works are published on Sullivan's interpersonal theory of psychiatry.
1957	Timothy Leary's monograph, Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, is published, offering the first circular model of interpersonal behavior.
1958	Fritz Heider's book, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, is published, serving as the foundation for the study of social cognition.
1963	Maurice Lorr and Douglas McNair (1963, 1965) revitalize interest in Leary's work with their factor analytic research demonstrating the robustness of a two dimensional, circular representation of behavior.
1969	The first of John Bowlby's books on Attachment and Loss is published. Bowlby offers a developmental perspective on the processes of early attachment that lead to internalized expectations for future relationships.
	In Interaction Concepts of Personality, Robert Carson focuses attention on the interpersonal processes that “pull” for symmetrical or complementary responses from others.
	Walter Mischel publishes his initial account of a social-cognitive theory of personality.
1974	Lorna Smith Benjamin's dimensional model of interpersonal behavior, Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB), is published, leading to numerous empirical investigations of social processes in psychotherapy, as well as two books on interpersonal treatment of psychiatric disorders: Interpersonal Diagnosis and Treatment of Personality Disorders (1993) and Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (2003).
	Gerald Klerman and colleagues (Klerman, DiMascio, Weissman, et al., 1974) present their initial research on Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) for the treatment of depression, which is now recognized as one of the most effective interventions ever developed for the treatment of this disorder.
1979	Leonard M. Horowitz publishes the first of many studies on interpersonal problems expressed in psychotherapy. Horowitz's influential work on interpersonal problems and motives is summarized in his 2004 monograph, Interpersonal Foundations of Psychopathology.
	Jerry S. Wiggins begins publishing a series of studies designed to clarify the interpersonal taxonomy of personality via psychometrics and factor analysis. He makes numerous contributions to interpersonal psychology, many of which are highlighted in his last major work, Paradigms of Personality Assessment (2003).
1983	Donald Kiesler publishes his 1982 Interpersonal Circle, an updated taxonomy of interpersonal behavior based on a new interpretation of complementarity. Kiesler's considerable body of work is summarized in the 1996 book, Contemporary Interpersonal Theory and Research.
1984	Hans Strupp and Jeffrey Binder develop Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy (TLDP), which facilitates awareness in the client of relationship patterns that foster dysfunctional behavior, and teaches healthy alternatives. TLDP has since been found to be effective in treating a wide range of psychiatric disorders.
1986	Albert Bandura publishes Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory.
1991	Michael B. Gurtman publishes the first of several articles and chapters that help illuminate and make accessible the unique methodologies for analyzing and interpreting assessments from circumplex measures.
1994	Timothy Leary's impact on contemporary interpersonal psychology is highlighted in an American Psychological Association symposium, Interpersonal Theory and the Interpersonal Circumplex: Timothy Leary's Legacy, later published as a Special Series in the Journal of Personality Assessment (Strack, 1996).
1997	Robert Plutchick and Hope Conte survey the wide range of two dimensional psychological models developed since the 1950s in their edited book, Circumplex Models of Personality and Emotions.
1998	The Society for Interpersonal Theory and Research (SITAR) meets for the first time in Snowbird, UT. Conceived the year before during a luncheon hosted by Leonard M. Horowitz following an American Psychological Association symposium, SITAR is now an international, multidisciplinary, scientific association. Goals of the Society are to encourage the development of interpersonal research; foster communication, understanding, and application of research findings; and to enhance the scientific and social value of interpersonal psychology.
2003	Aaron L. Pincus (Pincus & Ansell, 2003) begins offering a series of articles and chapters that expand and reinterpret traditional interpersonal theory, helping to widen its influence in clinical and personality psychology.
	Using new technology and sophisticated statistical methods (i.e., structural equation modeling), Pamela Sadler and Erik Woody offer an integrative model of interpersonal complementarity that can predict outcomes in interactions using interpersonal traits and situational patterns that incorporate the effects partners have on each other.
2004	Sidney J. Blatt publishes the first of two volumes summarizing his clinical and research work over a 30-year span, Experiences of Depression: Theoretical, Clinical and Research Perspectives. His more recent book, Polarities of Experience: Relatedness and Self-Definition in Personality Development, Psychopathology, and the Therapeutic Process (2008), offers a complex model of normal and abnormal interpersonal behavior using the metaconcepts of agency and communion.
	Debbie S. Moskowitz and David C. Zuroff present a dynamic view of interpersonal behavior based on a new method of data collection: Intensive repeated measures in naturalistic settings. Their work shows that interpersonal behavior can exhibit considerable variability within situations, and is measurable in terms of flux, pulse, and spin.
2007	Mario Mikulincer and Philip R. Shaver publish Attachment Patterns in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change, summarizing 25 years of research based on Bowlby's clinical and theoretical formulations.

Interpersonal psychology is clearly at a point where advances need to be brought together and organized so that researchers, practitioners, and students can develop a clearer perspective about the territory that has been covered and what is new, different, and state-of-the art. This handbook was designed to fill this need. Its main purpose is to inform readers about the central issues that are being addressed by researchers and clinicians in the realm of interpersonal psychology, with the aim of providing individuals new to the area some of the basic tools they need to become participants in this important area of scientific inquiry. We also believe that the book can help define and shape the field as it evolves during the first half of the 21st century.

To set the stage for readers, we first present a history of modern interpersonal psychology that focuses on the theoretical roots that commonly underlie its major lines of science and practice. We then describe how the handbook evolved into its current form and offer a summary of what can be found in each section and chapter.

History of Modern Interpersonal Psychology

Interpersonal psychology can trace its roots to ancient philosophy (e.g., Plato, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen), evolutionary biology (e.g., Darwin, 1859), and the pioneers who spawned the subfields of abnormal, organizational, personality, and social psychology (e.g., F. H. Allport, 1924; G. Allport, 1937; Münsterberg, 1915; Murray, 1938; Prince, 1914). However, it was the events of World War II that galvanized the interests of scientists and clinicians in this area. Seeking explanations for the decline of German society into Nazism during the 1930s, and the atrocities of the war that followed, one group of scientists began studying the social processes that shape intolerance and destructive behavior (e.g., Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939), while another focused on dispositional individual differences variables associated with aggression and the formation of dysfunctional groups (e.g., Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). Clinicians were called to action to provide effective treatments for thousands of “combat fatigue” casualties that had to be seen in groups because of their vast numbers (Coffey, 1954).

The field as we know it today was initially shaped by theoretical developments in American and British psychiatry during the 1930s and 1940s, and by academic social psychologists, primarily from Europe, who developed the first models to explain human behavior as a function of the reciprocal influence among individuals and the social environment. In America, the clinical roots of modern interpersonal psychology can be traced to the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan (e.g., 1940, 1953a, 1953b, 1954, 1956), who was trained as a psychoanalyst but dissatisfied with the lack of attention paid by psychoanalytic theory to interpersonal processes in the development and treatment of psychopathology. Sullivan was originally hired in 1921 by the psychiatrist William Alanson White to work with patients at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. He later transferred to the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• Part I: Theoretical Perspectives
• Part II: Basic Interpersonal Processes and Mechanisms
• Part III: Personality and Interpersonal Interactions
• Part IV: Assessment of Interpersonal Characteristics
• Part V: Psychopathology and Health
• Part VI: Interpersonal Therapeutic Interventions
• Author Index
• Subject Index