The Interpersonal World of the Infant (A Symposium)—Discussion

LET ME SAY AT THE OUTSET THAT, whatever questions I shall raise in my discussion of Dan Stern's book, The Interpersonal World of the Human Infant, this is a book that will rattle the belief systems of many, will assure lineage in the field of infancy researchers, and will inspire some to procreate that amazing creature, the contemporary infant. With one foot in the clinical realm, and the other in the realm of developmental psychology, Stern uses research and theory from many diverse fields (perception, cognition, language development, memory, even aesthetics) and his own observations of infants with their caregivers, to try and make sense of the mind of the infant. In addition, the book offers occasional glimpses into the professional life of someone who might be called to a hospital to perform some tests on Siamese twins, not yet surgically separated, or who might be meeting monthly for a year at someone's home in order to study the communications of a child during and after her father's "good-night" talk with her.

Stern's observations, and his ordering of them, which he invites us to regard as "a working hypothesis about infants' subjective experience of their own social life" (p. 4), has relevance for several spheres of interest. There is an expressive, clearly written and finely detailed picture presented of the perceptual and memory