Daily Inspiration Quote by Harry Stack Sullivan

Sullivan turns an everyday flashpoint into a diagnostic scene: anger as an approach, a knock on the door of relationship. The sentence is built like a small piece of therapy in motion. First, it grants the angry person status - you take them "very seriously" - which is both a de-escalation tactic and a moral stance. Treating anger as meaningful (not merely rude) refuses the easy dismissal that keeps conflicts shallow.

Then comes the sly pivot: "if you're like me". Sullivan slips himself into the frame, admitting the clinician is not a neutral instrument but a participant with a pulse. The "faint suggestion" that you can be angry too is doing double duty. It's a boundary (I am not your punching bag) and an invitation (I can meet you on the same emotional terrain). The faintness matters: it's calibrated, a controlled leak of heat meant to communicate strength without turning the room into a contest.

The odd, almost folksy phrase "what the shooting is about" smuggles in his era's proximity to violence and street-level conflict. Anger isn't abstract; it can escalate. Sullivan, writing in the early days of interpersonal psychiatry, keeps returning to the idea that personality and distress live between people, not inside a sealed skull. Here, the subtext is relational power: you don't defuse anger by floating above it; you defuse it by acknowledging its claim, signaling you won't be dominated, and steering the energy toward explanation. It's empathy with spine, delivered with a wry awareness that even experts want to flare up.