Concept
Participant observation
Harry Stack Sullivan's principle that the psychiatrist cannot study a patient from outside, because the data of psychiatry arise only in an interpersonal situation of which the psychiatrist is part. The analyst therefore observes while participating, attending to how their own conduct shapes what the patient says and does; the idea became a cornerstone of interpersonal and later of relational psychoanalysis.
- Introduced by
- Harry Stack Sullivan
- Key works
- 1
introduced by
- Harry Stack Sullivan Sullivan made the psychiatrist's participation in the interpersonal situation the root premise of psychiatric method, and worked it out for clinical practice in his lectures on the psychiatric interview.