IT WAS WITH GREAT INTEREST that I read Dan Stern's book. In it he brings together his voluminous and multifaceted direct observations of infants and their mothers with developmental and psychoanalytic theories. My interest had to do in part with learning more about infants, especially their unfolding relationships with their mothers, based on observed behavior rather than retrospective speculation. It also had to do with the possible ramifications of Stern's work for a revitalization of psychoanalytic theory and practice. I was not disappointed.

Inevitably we, as adults, project onto others—including infants—what we experience ourselves. However, it is one thing to hypothesize about infancy retroactively with apparent corroboration from a select group of troubled and impressionable adults seen in analysts' offices. It is quite another to watch an infant's actual behavior