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Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) held that the human individual is the product of interpersonal relations, based an entire analytic theory on this concept. Pattern of child's earliest nonsexual relationships with significant figures largely (but not rigidly) determines the pattern of all later interpersonal integration. Man's aims are seen as pursuit of satisfaction (biological) and pursuit of security (cultural). If society denies satisfaction in sexual sphere, neurosis may result, but according to Sullivanians (a numerically small but influential school in U.S.), it comes far more often from frustration, for whatever reason, in cultural sphere.
Erich Fronini of Manhattan and Mexico City denies that satisfaction of instinctual drives is focal problem, points out that man has fewer inherited behavior patterns than any other creature. In feudal times, he argues, the stratified, crystallized society wherein every individual knew his place gave security. Renaissance and mercantilism brought freedom from antlike existence but conferred (except on a privileged few) no freedom to work toward individual self-fulfillment. Thus neurosis today results mainly from frustrations which present trend of society threatens to intensify.