Review: The Interpersonal World Of The Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology

The Interpersonal World Of The Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology by Daniel N. Stern
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this as a psychology graduate student back in the mid 1980's. I loved it, one of the hands down best books on the topic. It's an impassioned subjective account of the infant, their apprehension of the world and their caretakers. Stern brings a wealth of experience, theoretical construct and observation to bear, all from a developmental, attachment, analytically interpersonal perspective. It informed me not only intellectually, but dramatically shaped my thinking in terms of the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist, and the clinical aspects therein. This is not just some academic tome, it's brilliantly lucid, not a bit turgid, and he writes like a dream--clear, clean, concise. Most of my school books I donated to the library or threw (yes, chagrined to admit it :-(, but Stern's book, is one of the rare ones I kept. It's sitting on my shelf because I could not bear to part with it: it gives me a sense of reassurance and comfort to think that he "knows" infants, and as such, a part of our soul as humanity, so intimately, it feels he holds us in the palm of his hand. Love love love this what surely must have been a labor of love for Stern :-)

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