The Present Moment In Psychotherapy And Everyday Life

Description

An exploration of the power of the profound but fleeting experiences at the root of interpersonal relationships. BEGINNING WITH THE CLAIM that we are psychologically alive only in the now, readers are invited to reconsider their day-to-day experiences. Certain moments of shared immediate experience--such as a knowing glance across a dinner table--are paradigmatic of what Stern shows to be the core of human experience, the three to five seconds he identifies as "the present moment." This book offers a novel response to age-old questions about the passage of time, what the future offers, and how humans change during the course of their lives.Library Journal (Sunday , February 01, 2004): Noted psychiatrist Stern (The Interpersonal World of the Infant) addresses the phenomenon of the emotional now, about four seconds of vitally felt but unspoken "lived stories." When shared with another, these "moments of meeting" shape the identities of participants in what is an intersubjective exchange, a mutual mind reading. Psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on history and interpretation, tends to miss this immediacy, which is as powerful and elusive as responding to a musical phrase or a child's gesture. Stern distills his perspective from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, the arts, and "breakfast interviews" that shed light on everyday "now" experience. His observations and theory will change our thinking about intimate relationships, time and rhythm, behavioral evolution, empathy, morality, and brain function. What works in therapy seems akin to Franz Alexander's "corrective emotional experience," an unremarked forebear in Stern's otherwise impressive bibliography. Important and accessible enough to be considered essential for most libraries.-James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC First published 2004.