SULLIVANS CLOSET - A REAPPRAISAL OF SULLIVAN,HARRY,STACK LIFE AND HISPIONEERING ROLE IN AMERICAN PSYCHIATRY

Although Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) was one of the foremost figu res in American psychiatry, much about his personal life remains obscu re, this despite a 1983 biography by Helen Swick Ferry that hints at, but ultimately denies, his homosexuality. Rumors about Sullivan's homo sexuality, fueled by his living for 22 years with another man, his ''f oster son,'' were widespread during his life. Interviews I conducted w ith many of his contemporaries-colleagues, students, and friends-yield ed sharply conflicting stories, but do substantiate that Sullivan was, for his time, openly homosexual. In addition, I discovered that Sulli van's experimental treatment ward for schizophrenics at the Sheppard-P ratt Hospital in Baltimore, which he ran from 1925 to 1929, and which brought him worldwide attention, was more daring and radical than his biographer has written. Sullivan was, perhaps, the first to use para-p rofessionals to treat hospitalized schizophrenics, an approach that wa s considered revolutionary in the 1920s. What was not widely known, th ough, was that. almost all the men on the all-male ward during those f ive years, both the ward attendants, whom Sullivan selected and traine d, and the patients, were gay.