You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Steven Stern and I are kindred spirits, self-psychologically based integrationists striving to combine ideas from different perspectives, past and present, so we can better treat our patients.
The ideas Stern sets forth in his new book are clinically invaluable in working with the broad range of patients suffering from “airless world syndrome.” “Airless world” patients grow up in situations in which one or both parents fail to recognize them; actively negate their authentic subjective reality, feelings, and needs; or both. These parents prioritize their own needs over their children’s, and patients are imprisoned by parental negation and deprived of the oxygen they vitally need to realize their authenticity. They can be resistant to change “because of the extent to which … there is no ‘air’ or ‘space’ between their identificatory experience of self and a truer sense of self grounded in their own genuine feelings, needs, rhythms, perceptions (including self-perceptions), interests, desires, judgments, and values” (Stern, 2026, p. 6).
“Airless world” patients’ dominant sense of self reveals their identification with the destructively invalidating perspective of their negating caretakers. Stern applies Ferenczi’s notion of identification with the aggressor (Ferenczi, 1933) to show that children are vulnerable to identifying with parents’ mischaracterization not only because of parental imposition, but also because children look to their parents to reflect who they are. Echoing Sullivan, Kohut, and Winnicott,
Address correspondence to Peter Kaufmann, PhD. E-mail:
among others in the relational tradition, Stern emphasizes how much we define our sense of self through how our caregivers treat us. Our caregivers exert such power from the word “go” because we look to them as the authorities who determine reality. We are primed to do this. Following Fairbairn and Ferenczi, I would add that children also adopt the parents’ view because they fervently