Interpersonal World Of The Infant: Implications for Clinical Theory and Practice

Experimental studies of infant and child development form the advancing edge of a major challenge to traditional psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. Daniel Stern’s brilliant and innovative research and his reformulation of developmental theory strongly undermine any notion of ‘non-social’ infant development. Dr. Stern shows the central importance of the mother-child interactions in shaping the child’s own emerging sense of self and reformulations of developmental theory with clinical psychopathology and treatment. Various therapeutic approaches are discussed in terms of the locus of their therapeutic actions on the dynamic system of the parent’s and infant’s overt behavior and their respective representation of themselves and other in their interactions.