When Harry Met Jimmie: Trauma and Ambition in Sullivan’s Long-Term Domestic Relationship

Abstract

In her biography of the innovative and influential psychotherapist Harry Stack Sullivan, Helen Swick Perry has provided a brief secondhand report of the circumstances under which Sullivan met James Inscoe, the youth who “came to stay” for the rest of Sullivan’s life and became known as his “adopted son.” Inscoe also wrote letters to a friend with an account of how they first became acquainted. The present article proposes that a case history of Sullivan’s contains hitherto unrecognized autobiographical elements that furnish a fuller picture of a domestic relationship founded on economic, emotional, and sexual adversity and pressures to appear successful. Perry is critiqued for the positive spin she puts on Sullivan’s life as she withheld significant information and clouds other inescapable conclusions in her otherwise painstakingly researched biography.

Keywords:

• autobiography
• biography
• case histories
• domestic relationship
• Harry Stack Sullivan
• history
• psychiatrists

This article is referred to by:

A Note from the Editors

Acknowledgments

I thank Michael Stuart Allen for allowing me access to photocopies of his unpublished interview notes and to the late John Kerr for providing them. I am deeply grateful for the encouragement and support of outstanding psychoanalytic historians Peter L. Rudnytsky and B. William Brennan.

Notes

¹ “His interest in his own body was kept under sharp control by his mother” (Perry, 1982, p. 139).

² “In his home community at the time it was generally felt that the relationship between Sullivan and [Clarence Bellinger] was homosexual in the full genital sense of the word” (Chapman, 1976, p. 23). “Bellinger, was an open homosexual; lived with someone in the hospital!” (Perry, 1987; her source is Edward Kempf). “His own mother had been very disapproving about sex—he said he had his first experience with a high school principal [Herbert Butts] who had long admired his mother. On a walk in the country the principal had shown more of himself than he should have” (Allen, 2000, p. 10; Read, n.d., p. 21). “Butts was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in Harry’s early life” (Perry, 1982, p. 72). Perry was apparently unaware of the consequences of the “walk in the country.” She claims that in Smyrna “physical intimacies with another person of either sex were nonexistent” (p. 139).

³ Sullivan’s extravagant lifestyle once he became a psychiatrist is documented throughout Perry (1982, pp. 199, 346–348).

⁴ “My mother never troubled to notice the characteristics of the child she had brought forth. … I felt she had no use for me except as a clotheshorse on which to hang an elaborate pattern of illusions” (Sullivan, 1942, p. 813).

⁵ “Aunt Margaret was sexually involved with her longtime companion,” according to Allen’s notes from his interview with (Perry, 1987).

⁶ Sullivan’s hiding of his background clearly relates to shame and a general fear of exposure of the facts of his early life. In addition, the “trauma” referred to by previous biographers takes little account of the sexual mistreatment he experienced with older males during his childhood, even if unrecognized as trauma by Sullivan himself.

⁷ See also Cornett (pp. 279, 280): “Two bulwarks of Sullivan’s loneliness were his unwillingness to allow anyone truly to know or understand him and his use of deception. … Sullivan also deployed language to avoid revealing too much about himself.”

Rollo May characterized Sullivan in a July 13, 1952, New York Times profile as “The Ironic Prober” (noted in Cornett, 2008).

⁸ Perry (1982) said that Sullivan told her he had been hospitalized for schizophrenia and that she had “other information that establishes the fact itself that he was hospitalized at least once” (p. 4). No one yet has discovered where he was hospitalized. Chatelaine found no evidence that he was in Binghamton. A likely possibility is Bellevue in New York City where Flavius Packer, son of the Sullivans’ family doctor, worked alongside his close friend Menas Gregory. In addition, Cornell University had just that year (1909) established a psychiatric outpatient clinic staffed by Dr. Horace Frink, who had trained under A. A. Brill at Bellevue. Brill was “assistant physician of mental disease” at Bellevue from 1908 to 1911. All Bellevue records are lost, however. It is also possible that Sullivan was psychoanalyzed by Brill in 1916–17, another “missing” period in his life.

⁹ The year Sullivan sat for the licensing exam in the lenient state of Illinois only about 50% of students who had graduated from the medical school he attended passed the exam. At the time, there were 14 medical schools in Illinois, and the state was known as “the plague spot of medical education in America.” “Report on the Administration of the Medical Practice Act from 1 July 1917–31 December 1918,” State of Illinois Department of Registration and Education, Springfield, Illinois, 1919.

Alexander (1990, pp. 225–232) addresses the difficulty in explaining Sullivan’s suddenly getting a diploma, though he had not graduated with his class, and the “entirely unappealing direction” of having to consider that the name on the diploma was forged. (The name on the diploma is printed.) He explicitly suggests that a fraudulent degree would make sense of a lot of unanswered questions about Sullivan’s life. Chatelaine (1981) interviewed Roy Grinker Sr., who was knowledgeable about the medical college and who claimed “to get admitted one had to pay a substantial bribe” (p. 486). It’s not unreasonable to assume that in the year (1917) when the medical college was going out of business that another substantial bribe might buy a diploma, despite the candidate’s not having passed required courses or undertaken an internship or residency. Chapman (1976) also wrote that “graduation depended on payment of tuition rather than scholastic performance” (p. 26). Sullivan was exempted from taking licensing exams in Maryland or New York, despite his Illinois medical school being unaccredited.

¹⁰ Saxton (2002, p. 153).

¹¹ References to dated interviews conducted by Michael Stuart Allen are found in photocopies of his interview notes, received by the author from John Kerr with Allen’s permission.

¹² Chatelaine quotes staffer William Elliott as saying the live-in secretary, who was flamboyantly gay and recruited from another Sheppard-Pratt ward, was named Munson. He also writes that Elliot had some difficulty remembering names (Chatelaine, 1981, pp. 446–452). My research indicates that the live-in secretary was Merrell R. Campbell, who was listed in a 1924 census as a stenographer at the Veterans Bureau and living in Washington, DC. The 1930 U.S. Census listed him as Sullivan’s “secretary” and “lodger” in Baltimore. The household broke up when they moved to New York City. According to a long-time friend of his, Campbell eventually returned to his roots in the Kansas/Missouri area where he was known as a “gifted artist. He was a loving, engaging, well-read individual” (anonymous friend, personal communication, March 22, 2016).

¹³ This was also a red-letter year for Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Henry Ford, and Al Capone, to name a few other bootstrapping Americans.

¹⁴ Original is at the Washington School of Psychiatry.

¹⁵ According to the 15th U.S. Census (May 5, 1930), James Inscoe was born in 1913 and living with Harry Sullivan in Baltimore as his “servant” along with “lodger” and “physician’s secretary,” “Merris” Campbell.

¹⁶ I use the names “Harry” and “Jimmie” when discussing their relationship as a couple and when referring to either as a youth. For Jimmie’s full name I use “James Inscoe.” Although the two usually referred to him as “Jimmie Sullivan” as part of the adopted son fiction, he never was adopted or had a legal name change.

¹⁷ Despite the high quality of his research and concrete findings, Chatelaine (1981), like Chapman and Perry, publically accepts the fiction of Inscoe as merely an “adopted son” (p. 430). In this instance, Chatelaine was strongly discouraged by the Washington School of Psychiatry from mentioning Sullivan’s homosexuality (Wake, 2008, p. 194). Blechner (2005), while proclaiming Sullivan’s homosexuality, accepts the fiction of the adoption and calls it “daring and creative” (p. 3).

¹⁸ In accord with this view, in his biography of Sullivan, Barton Evans III (1996) refers to Jimmie as a “vagrant” (p. 41).

¹⁹ Hadley, a Quaker from the Midwest, was a pioneer in private psychoanalytic practice in Washington, DC, and a leader in the American Psychoanalytic Association. Along with Sullivan, he was a founder of the William Alanson White Foundation. He was Sullivan’s “most loyal supporter” from his days at St. Elizabeths until nearly the end of Sullivan’s life (Perry, 1982, p. 328).

²⁰ Allen’s interview notes of September 23, 1987, indicate that Perry told him that Hadley took Jimmie to see Sullivan at his house.

²¹ “Of particular interest are several letters written in the 1970’s by Sullivan’s adopted son, Jimmie, concerning his initial relationship with Sullivan” (Crowley, 1984).

²² It is not certain what this refers to. Dupont Circle, near Embassy Row, is today a well-known place where gay people meet. It is possible that this is what Jimmie was referring to, but how one would be “socially prominent” there is unclear.

²³ See, for example, Inscoe’s coy discussion of Sullivan’s personal symbol composed of horses’ heads in a yin-yang configuration (Perry, 1982, pp. 342–343). An example from Inscoe’s later life after Sullivan’s death is a request for a “floozey” on a shopping list prepared for neighbors who were assisting him (Foxwell & Foxwell, 1989).

²⁴ This is an odd concern given that she provides powerful documentation that James Inscoe was never a patient at Sheppard-Pratt. She writes that J. Ruthwin Evans, an attendant on the ward from 1926 through 1953, told Perry that Inscoe was not a patient there and says that Sheppard-Pratt had no record of James Inscoe as a patient (Wake, 2011, pp. 47, 228n71).

²⁵ This self-analysis preceded his attempted analysis with his friend Clara Thompson. That analysis terminated prematurely when she confronted him about character issues related to his extravagant purchases and impending bankruptcy.

²⁶ For example, Freud used part of his 1937 essay “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” to try to come to terms with his tragic relationship with his estranged colleague Sandor Ferenczi, which is described in detail in their correspondence (Dupont, 1988). Heinz Kohut (1979) used disguised autobiography in his famous case history “The Two Analyses of Mr. Z” to try to understand himself in a Kohutian rather than traditional Freudian framework. Both these works were not understood during their authors’ lifetimes as being autobiographical.

²⁷ “A homosexual phase in the pre-adolescent stage of development is necessary to achieve heterosexual intimacy and that the failure to explore one’s sexuality during those years can result in schizophrenia” (Allen, 2000, p. 12).

²⁸ The daybook is at the Washington School of Psychiatry according to John Kerr (personal communication), who saw it.

²⁹ Note that the Maryland Vice Commission Report, five volumes (no publication data, 1915, p. 424; see http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/maryland.htm#fn20) considered “charming” as gay slang, and the “charming dentist” in the case is homosexual. This may be an example of Sullivan’s use of coded language.

³⁰ According to Philip Sapir (1989), Hadley was a “close friend” of Sullivan’s even after the move to New York City. Like many others, Hadley often lent Sullivan money that was not repaid. Eventually, even he broke with Sullivan over excessive demands made on their friendship (Perry, 1982, pp. 328–329).

³¹ “An encounter with an overtly homosexual individual provides the [healthy homosexually inexperienced] midadolescent with an important experience, the outcome of which may be unfortunate or otherwise. … The undergoing of genital gratification as a result of the encounter is but an added incentive to personality growth. It is a sexually pleasant experience, but one that includes unpleasant features” (Sullivan, 1972, p. 198).

³² Moira Greyland (2015), the daughter of Walter Breen (aka J. Z. Eglinton, who mentions Sullivan 18 times in Greek Love), writes, from harrowing personal experience, “Boy lovers do not think of what they are doing as ‘molestation.’ To them it is sex, they imagine it is consensual, and any objections will certainly be overridden by the orgasms they are certain they can produce, and it is the shame of these orgasms that silences the boy-victims, and persuades them they ‘must’ be gay” (para. 11).

³³ Even before Harry died, Jimmie complained to housewife friends that “when you do well you have nothing to show for it” (Wake, 2011, p. 195). After Harry’s death, Jimmie was left destitute and had to sell their house, and since he had no career of his own he had trouble even finding clerical work (Perry, 1987). According to his neighbor friends, “Jim” had been “an indentured servant almost. His mother was given his wages. He was very distraught over this” (Foxwell & Foxwell, 1989). In later years, as a result of royalties from the posthumous publication of Sullivan’s work by Perry, Jimmie was able to live comfortably for a time, but eventually the “royalities dropped,” and he died just before having to sell his house to cover nursing home costs.

³⁴ In Anna Freud’s use of the phrase, not Sandor Ferenczi’s original meaning.

³⁵ For example, Inscoe proposed marriage to Perry, and Sullivan told Perry that if Jimmie hadn’t been with Sullivan he would have been happily married (Perry, 1987). Inscoe also requested “a floozy” on his shopping list and called out a woman’s name at the time of his death (Foxwell & Foxwell, 1989).

³⁶ “Like many other straight, working-class men, adolescent working-class male youth in the early 1920s and 30s tended to not see themselves as being ‘fairies’ if they took only insertive roles. … While not all youth limited themselves to receiving oral sex … the general trend away from ‘effeminizing’ acts is clear” (Kaye, 2003, p. 16).

³⁷ Between 1903 and 1913 Brill treated more than 50 homosexual patients and had a positive and supportive view of their mental health at that time (Brill, 1913). It is also possible that Sullivan was analyzed by Brill in 1916–17, another “missing” period in his life.

³⁸ “[It is] not uncommon with schizophrenics with extreme chagrin they announce some desire for genital intimacy with my person, to which it is traditional that I say, I know I would enjoy it but it would gum up the work terribly. … I go to considerable trouble to let them know that I would have no objection at all except that it would interfere with the work, and I mean it, what the hell” (Sullivan, as cited in Alexander, 1990, p. 241). One student in the group who refused to see Sullivan’s homosexuality stated, “No one really wants to know, and no one pushes the point” (Alexander, 1990, p. 242).

³⁹ There were several reports made to Perry in the 1970s by Sullivan’s former private patients in New York of his directly groping or coming on to them (Wake, 2011, pp. 148–149). Later, when Sullivan had become famous and respected, these former patients were less negative about the experience. The philosopher Patrick Mullahy said Sullivan made a physical advance on him when he was a patient and that he knew of at least one other person who had been approached this way (p. 149).

⁴⁰ In his 1939 will Sullivan refers to Inscoe as his “friend and ward in fact,” who has been “in all senses, a son to me” (Perry, 1982, p. 319).

⁴¹ I believe William A. Percy III (2012) caught this dynamic perfectly in discussing a biography by Ben Wise of his uncle Will Percy when he wrote in an Amazon.com review, “Wise self-censors, hiding the inconvenient truth that Uncle Will had affairs with three boys, his underage black servants, a truth which would have crashed his ‘good gay’ narrative into a fatal head-on collision with an alternative story of child sexual abuse, a story also heavily freighted with what would be seen these days as further embarrassing transgressions: power abuse along race and class lines. Back then, though, in the 1920s and 30s, Uncle Will trained up each of those teenage boys, advancing their education and career prospects. It was seen as valued patronage.” Percy (2005) earlier contrasts the willful blindness of another Will Percy biographer with a history of the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood written by John Barry: “He got almost everything right. … He describes [uncle] Will’s affairs with three of his black chauffeurs—a subject that not even Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of House of Percy, discusses.”

⁴² See Bachardy, “I was just regarded as a sort of child prostitute” (Maupin, 1985, p. 17). See the documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story (Mascara, Santi, & Scott, 2008). See also the film A Single Man (Ford, Miano, & Salerno, 2009) starring Colin Firth, based on the Christopher Isherwood novel.

The Berman cult has been eloquently reported on by former student Marc Fisher (2013) in the New Yorker.

⁴³ See, for example, high-demand group expert Colleen Russell (http://www.colleenrussellmft.com/).

I don’t find it a coincidence that there is a verifiable cult of Sullivanians. The founders were associated with the William Alanson White Institute. Jane Pearce worked with Sullivan, and her partner, Saul Newton, was creative in his self-invention. Their community used “radical processes of regression, corrective experience, and personality restructuring” with a focus on the terrible influence of mothers. See Siskind (2003); and especially the lengthy and thoughtful review of the book by Daniel Shaw (2006). Also see Lewin (1988), Conason (1986), and Black (1975). For one observation on how Sullivan was treated during his lifetime “as though he were Buddha,” see Searles (1980, p. 22).

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Kathleen E. Meigs

Kathleen E. Meigs, BA, is an independent scholar whose interest in psychoanalytic history has spanned nearly forty years. Her undergraduate studies were at Stanford University and UCLA. Her current projects focus on the decades of 1910–1930, particularly the biographies and milieu of Joseph C. Thompson, Harry Stack Sullivan, Sandor Ferenczi, and Erik Erikson. She worked for many years in academic editing and is the author of Mishopshno: A Novel of the Early Chumash. She currently lives in Gainesville, Florida.