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Donnel Stern's new book, The Infinity of the Unsaid, offers readers the chance to follow the vivid evolution of psychoanalytic thinking at its most exciting moments: from the successive and necessary articulations of clinical practice to theoretical reflection. Stern's text is engaging and accompanies the reader, step by step, towards his elaborate conceptions of the role of nonverbal experiences and, from the perspective of the hermeneutic tradition, of the relationship between the verbal and nonverbal in psychoanalysis.
It is, therefore, a book dedicated to one of the most relevant themes of contemporary psychoanalysis, that is, the limits and the different types of formulation and expression of human experiences in the analytical field. The opposition and tensions between the two great individualistic revolutions of modern thought (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), the Enlightenment and romantic perspectives, offer the horizon for the reader to take a stand on whether or not it is possible to express the totality of an experience, whether or not it is possible to completely illuminate the different levels of subjective and interpersonal experiences. It is in this context that the central theme of the book, the nonverbal dimension of experiences and their forms of relation to verbal language, is investigated.
Those who are already familiar with Stern's work will rediscover his fluid and enthusiastic style, his commitment to the relational and interpersonal aspect of the human condition, and his relentless effort to investigate the dimensions of the emergence of meaning in the different forms of clinical and theoretical work. They will also rediscover the rich and broad dialogue that the author seeks to sustain with the different traditions that comprise contemporary psychoanalysis. Although most of this dialogue occurs with American psychoanalysts, there is no shortage of references to Lacan, Laplanche, Green, the Botellas, Hanna Segal, Joseph Sandler, Ma