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THIS BOOK, DESPITE ITS TITLE, is not for child specialists only. Although one of the major thrusts of the book is the explication of a treatment approach for infants and their parents, The Motherhood Constellation is a significant addition as well to the evolving developmental theory of parent-infant interaction. Stern once again contributes convincingly to the theoretical perspective that emphasizes early interaction as a basic building block of personality. This interactional theory, in turn, supports the many contemporary revisions of psychoanalytic technique which emphasize the relationship between patient and analyst. In this regard, Stern’s book is of value to analysts of all orientations, whether they treat children or not.
The publication of Stern’s (1985) book, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, helped to fuel the contemporary theoretical turn away from the libidinal infant and toward the interactive parent-infant dyad. Through direct extrapolations of his (and others’) work with parents and infants to the patient-analyst dyad, Stern presented compelling and comprehensive theoretical support for technical innovations that focus on the interactive psychotherapeutic dyad rather than solely on the intrapsychic patient. Just as Klein’s and Sullivan’s revisions of developmental theory led to changes in psychoanalytic technique, so Stern’s research lent additional and necessary support toward viewing the patient-analyst interaction as central—both clinically informative and therapeutically mutative.
In The Motherhood Constellation, Stern undertakes nothing less than a radical redefinition of who the patient is. In the referrals of newly formed families to psychotherapists, the patient is no longer, for Stern, the problematic infant. “The new ‘patient,’ never before encountered, is not a