(1959) later adaptational concept of “competence motivation,” or “effectance.” According to Sullivan (1940), humans “seem to be born . . . with something of this . . . motive toward the manifestation of power or ability” (p. 14). Sullivan limited his concept to the effective pursuit of relational intimacy, bodily satisfaction, and interpersonal security however, this motive would apply equally, I think, to the pursuit of self-fulfillment. However, Sullivan’s concept of the “power motive” suf- fered a somewhat curious fate in the development of his ideas. At first, in his early lectures published as the Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry, Sullivan considered the power motive an important aspect of what he then called the need for personal security. And though Sullivan restricted his concept to the interpersonal and adap- tive, it could have easily encompassed the personal and expressive. Nevertheless, in later publications, this concept simply faded from view and was supplanted by discussions of “power operations,” grandiose or controlling security operations through which the individual hopes to defensively maintain or restore a threat- ened interpersonal self (i.e., his or her self-esteem). 6. These dimensions of the self are not to be confused with the multiple “self states” posited by some interpersonal and relational theorists (cf. Bromberg 1997). The coparticipant self is a unitary though complex and multifaceted self. As Frie (2003) points out, even if we accept the notion of multiple constructed self-states, this self-sys- tem relies on an underlying continuity of selfhood that stands in the way of psychic disintegration and allows for self-perception and understanding over time. Thus it would seem that there is need to temper the constructivist impulse in recent theory in order to leave a space for individual will and action. (p. 650) The five dimensions of the self represent different aspects or domains of one unitary self. In contrast, the various “self- states” or “multiple selves” represent the various transitory states of one’s personified self. They represent, in other words, an elaboration of Sullivan’s concept of “me-you” relations and theory of self-personifications or representations of self and other. “Self-states” refer to momentary patterns of interactional sequences between oneself and others that are governed by the existing state of the coparticipants’ self-and-other personifications. The “self-states” clinically represent patterns of thought, affect, belief, and motive. These “self states” represent the moment-to- moment functioning of the interpersonal self, the functioning, in other words, of one dimension of the five-dimensional coparticipant self. A danger of a clinical focus on “self-states” or “multiple selves,” with its implied situational bias and its fractioning potential, is that it can lead to a dis- avowal of personal agency and responsibility. One can disown one’s experience or behavior by assigning it to one’s self-state rather than to oneself, particularly if that self-state is seen as having been “induced” by someone else. The self may be complex and multifaceted, but in my view it is a unitary phe- nomenon, uniquely individual for each person. Notes 223