Discussion

IN THE INTERPERSONAL WORLD OF THE INFANT Daniel Stern has set himself a monumental task: he not only undertakes to study in minute detail the vagaries of development of a sense of self in the first two years of life, but he also views the infant through the clinical eye of the analyst and finally ends by commenting on the relevance of his findings to clinical work. Stern has succeeded in outlining his findings and subsequent inferences extremely clearly; in addition he has challenged some well established analytic notions of development, and has suggested a bridge between development as observed and later pathology. With it all he has remained clear about his own interpersonal theoretical thrust while at the same time being respectful of the theoretical contributions of others.

Central to the book as a whole is Stern's respect for the infant, its psyche and its interpersonal world, a respect not always found among analytic theoreticians who have often viewed the infant "through a glass darkly", that is from an adultomorphic distance. This distant, adult perspective ascribes all manner of psychic life to the infant, usually in clinical and ultimately in pathologic terms. Given that few analysts have chosen to spend time in the nursery, their theories are by necessity based on inferences from their work with adult patients. Those who have used infant observation, Mahler, Bowlby and others, have either not had access to the kind of technology that lends itself to finely tuned observations and to actual experimentation, or they too have had a predetermined view of the infant. More often than not the infant has been described as either being at the mercy of drives, or as being symbiotically merged and needing help to move in the direction of separation and individuation. In either case the interpersonal world is mainly seen as instrumental in encouraging the infant to develop from an undifferentiated state towards becoming a functioning person. Stern does not rej