A Discussion of the Articles in Two Issues of Psychoanalytic Inquiry in Honor of Daniel Stern

A good while ago, Daniel Stern and I were invited to Germany by a large group of movement therapists to help them construct a postmovement treatment interview. Dan and I, along with several hundred attendees, observed a demonstration in which a withdrawn aversive person was induced to join and interact. The leaders then turned to us. Before I could say a word, Dan said “Why talk? You’ve done it.” And I and several hundred others gasped. Subsequently we did help them to construct an interview to provide a verbal narrative that would expand and consolidate the movement story. But I was left with a puzzle: What did Dan’s unexpected, so spontaneous, response mean? On reflection, I realized he was validating the therapeutic power of a nonverbal intervention. And he was opening our minds to why talk; what does talking do? How necessary is it to therapeutic change? What of the other nonverbal forms of communication and the vitality and potential for change inherent in them? These are excellent questions, and in my next several books I included a section on why talk? Nonetheless, something about Dan’s forceful challenge remained bewildering. Consequently, I was delighted to read the reminiscence written by his wife, Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern (2017), about Dan’s early life experience with nonverbal communication with his depressed silent mother and during his hospitalization. Dan knew first-hand, deep in his being, the power, the essential vitality, in narratives told and understood before, and later without, language. He attuned to people’s movements, facial expressions, the music of their lyrics—and in this way experienced vitality intersubjectively. At the same time, the man who asked “why talk?” was a great talker and writer, poetic as Bob Emde writes, and lyrical as Nadia notes. He rendered complexity into understandable words and phrases that, as several authors point out, have become common vocabulary: present moment, implicit relational knowing, moments of meeting, an