Interpersonal Reciprocity and Transaction 215focused on the therapist-patient dyad as the unit of investiga-
tion (e.g., Henry, Schacht, & Strupp, 1990). Despite these
differences, we view the structural models derived from the
individual differences and dyadic approaches to be highly
convergent in many respects, and they should be viewed
as complementary approaches rather than mutually exclusive
competitors (e.g., Pincus, 1998; Pincus & Wilson, 2001).
INTERPERSONAL RECIPROCITY
AND TRANSACTION
The notion of reciprocity in human relating is reflected in a
wide variety of psychological concepts including repetition
compulsion (Freud, 1914, 1920), projective identification
(Grotstein, 1981), core conflictual relational themes
(Luborsky & Crits-Cristoph, 1990), self-fulfilling prophe-
cies (Carson, 1982), vicious circles (Millon, 1996), self-
verification seeking (Swann, 1983), and object-relational
enactments (Kernberg, 1976), to name a few. If we assume
that an interpersonal situation involves two or more people
relating to each other in ways that bring about social and self-
related learning, this implies that something is happening that
is more than mere random activity. Reciprocal relational pat-
terns create an interpersonal field (Wiggins & Trobst, 1999)
in which various transactional influences impact both interac-
tants as they resolve, negotiate, or disintegrate the interper-
sonal situation. Within this field, interpersonal behaviors tend
to pull, elicit, invite, or evoke restricted classesof responses
from the other, and this is a continual, dynamic transactional
process. Thus, an interpersonal theory of personality empha-
sizesfield-regulatoryprocesses over self-regulatoryoraffect-
regulatoryprocesses (Mitchell, 1988).
Sullivan (1948) initially conceived of reciprocal processes
in terms of basic conjunctive and disjunctive forces that lead
either to resolution or to disintegration of the interpersonal
situation. He further developed this in the “theorem of recip-
rocal emotions,” which states that “integration in an interper-
sonal situation is a process in which (1) complementary
needs are resolved (or aggravated); (2) reciprocal patterns of
activity are developed (or disintegrated); and (3) foresight
of satisfaction (or rebuff) of similar needs is facilitated”
(Sullivan, 1953b, p. 129). Kiesler (1983) pointed out that al-
though this theorem was a powerful interpersonal assertion, it
lacked specificity, and “the surviving general notion of com-
plementarity was that actions of human participants are
redundantly interrelated (i.e., have patterned regularity) in
some manner over the sequence of transactions” (p. 198).
Leary’s (1957) “principle of reciprocal interpersonal
relations” provided a more systematic declaration of the
patterned regularity of interpersonal behavior, stating “inter-
personal reflexes tend (with a probability greater than chance)
to initiate or invite reciprocal interpersonal responses from the
‘other’ person in the interaction that lead to a repetition of the
original reflex” (p. 123). Learning in interpersonal situations
takes place in part because social interaction is reinforcing
(Leary, 1957). Carson (1991) referred to this as an interbehav-
ioral contingency process whereby “there is a tendency for a
given individual’s interpersonal behavior to be constrained or
controlled in more or less predictable ways by the behavior
received from an interaction partner” (p. 191).Describing Reciprocal Interpersonal PatternsStructural models of interpersonal behavior such as the IPC
and SASB have provided conceptual anchoring points and
lexicons upon which more systematic description of the
patterned regularity of reciprocal interpersonal processes can
be articulated (e.g., Benjamin, 1974; Carson, 1969; Kiesler,
1983).The Interpersonal CircleCarson (1969) focused on the notion of interpersonal com-
plementarity as the patterned regularity between two people
that contributed to “felt security.” This notion is directly re-
lated to Sullivan’s conception of a resolved interpersonal sit-
uation as an outcome in which both persons’ needs are met
via reciprocal patterns of activity leading to its likely recur-
rence. Anchoring his propositions within the IPC system,
Carson first proposed that complementarity was based on the
social exchange of status and love, as reflected in reciprocity
for the vertical dimension (i.e., dominance pulls for submis-
sion; submission pulls for dominance) and correspondence
for the horizontal dimension (friendliness pulls for friendli-
ness; hostility pulls for hostility).
Kiesler’s (1983) seminal paper on complementarity sig-
nificantly expanded these IPC-based conceptions in several
ways. First, he recognized the continuous nature of the circu-
lar model’s descriptions of behavior, and he noted that be-
cause all interpersonal behaviors are blends of dominance
and nurturance, the principles of reciprocity and correspon-
dence could be employed to specify complementary points
along the entire IPC perimeter. Thus, beyond the cardinal
points of the IPC, it was asserted that (for example) hostile
dominance pulls for hostile submission, friendly dominance
pulls for friendly submission, and so forth, which can be fur-
ther described by the lower-level taxa in these segments of
the model. Second, Kiesler also incorporated Wiggins’ (1979,
1980, 1982) conception of the IPC as a formal geometric