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Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) is well known for his interpersonal theory of mental illness, but little is known about how he actually worked as a clinician with patients. This article examines a pivotal time in Sullivan's career at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Baltimore from 1922 to 1930. Using clinical records as well as published writings, the article focuses on 2 crucial issues that are not fully addressed either in Sullivan's published writings or in past studies of him: first, his treatment as a gay psychiatrist of patients who he believed had homosexual orientations; second, the intellectual and institutional paradigm in psychiatry that influenced his practice. Finally, this article addresses the circumstances surrounding Sullivan's departure from Sheppard-Pratt, suggesting psychiatry's limited confrontation with the social stigmatization of homosexuality.

This article examines the psychiatric screening of U.S. soldiers during the Second World War, established by psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949), as a key moment in the public application of clinical psychiatry, as well as a turning point in Sullivan's intellectual and professional career. After a brief look at the ideas and expectations Sullivan brought to the screening system, I discuss a major problem of the screening: the mismatch between the medical concept of disease prevention and the realities of the mass screening as a public policy. As a way to highlight this mismatch, I focus on Sullivan's failure to protect homosexual men from medical and social stigmatization by screening them out of the armed forces. Despite his liberal approach to the issue of homosexuality before the war, which he had created in his clinical practice, Sullivan was unable to persuade the military and the public of gay men's right to serve the nation. The examination of how his sympathetic view of homosexuality became circumscribed reveals not only the gap between clinical insights and public policy, but also how tentative views of homosexuality in public debate among liberal psychiatrists during the decade preceding the war contributed to the failure to make non-homophobic policy in the 1940s. This article shows that the relative conservatism in the politics of sexuality among liberal psychiatrists, as well as the intransigent conservatism as seen in homophobic tradition of the Army, contributed to the discriminatory screening criteria.

This article examines psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan's approach to the issue of homosexuality. Sullivan (1892-1949), well-known for his interpersonal theory of mental illness, is believed to have accomplished a high recovery rate in his treatment of schizophrenia during the 1920s. Most of his patients, as well as Sullivan himself, were concerned about their "homosexual" orientations. He encouraged physical affection between male patients and male attendants, believing that it would free patients from their guilt for their "unconventional" sexuality. But he kept his compelling practice hidden, not bringing it into open discussion to confront the definition of homosexuality as "sickness." This article traces the process in which the omission of the important aspect of Sullivan's practice began during his lifetime and continued in the scholarship since. In so doing, the article suggests a nuanced understanding of this important figure in the U.S. intellectual and cultural history of homosexuality.

Homosexuality has been one of the most contested issues in the history of social psychoanalysis. To better understand the issue's medical and social significance, we need a micro-historical analysis illuminating doctor-patient interactions in changing historical contexts. This paper sheds light on the clinical practice of the well-known founder of interpersonal theory, Harry Stack Sullivan , with a focus on four patients: two from the 1920s and two from the 1930s. During these decades, many psychiatrists, including neo-Freudians like Sullivan, considered homosexuality a mental illness. But Sullivan himself was a gay man, and he attempted to create efficacious therapeutic relationships amid a generally homophobic medicine. This comported with his effort to create professional coalitions with social psychologists and sociologists. In both clinical and non-clinical settings, he tried to find solutions to individual problems by redefining a limiting socio-cultural environment of therapy. Ambitious as this plan was, his patients' response to his approach varied from cautious cooperation to apparent rejection, as his actions became more immersed in the ambiguous realm of sexual subjectivity. In examining this change, I raise the question of what constituted ethically sound, professionally acceptable behaviours and efficacious therapeutic relationships, particularly in the historical context of the emerging collaboration between psychoanalysis and social psychology.