Customer Reviews

The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The hardback edition of this book is filled to the limit with spelling and gramatical errors; who edited it? The sloppiness takes away from an interesting, if occasionally dull, perspective about how change occurs in small moments of shifting awareness of self and other. Stern seems unsure of his audience and so his book falls somewhere between being suitable for the general reader or geared towards the professional.

The book is very dense and difficult to understand. The title is very appealing but the content of the book is very intellectual. When I bought the book I was looking for practical ideas to focus on the present moment in psychotherapy. It was difficult for me to stay engaged and interested. I resorted to flipping pages then giving up on it.

A stunningly fundamental book. Full of insight, suggestive perspectives, inspiring crystallizations. A research-based account of the psychology of the present moment with far-reaching consequences for our concept of ourselves, for intersubjectivity and for philosophy of life.

Key concepts: subjective experience, experience as it is lived, the moment of meeting, microanalytic interview, implicit knowledge, temporal dynamics, vitality affects, the present moment, the now moment, a lived story, intentions, intentional-feeling-flow, the intersubjective matrix, the mutual interpenetration of minds, mirror neurons, conscousness, intersubjective consciousness, sharing, intersubjective orienting, sloppiness in cocreation, the moving along process, a shared feeling voyage, change.

"This book is about subjective experience - especially experiences that lead to change.... The idea of presentness is the key." (p. xiii)

3 years ago, I have heard a presentation on Stern's vitality affects, and that was one of the reason for I started my psychological studies.

In Daniel Stern's and the Boston Process Change Study Group approaches I found something that I looked for years: the trial of integration of general research based psychology, child development and applied psychology in psychotherapy.
Wundt felt that the psychology needed to be based on scientific research, but dod not found the "spirit". Neuropsychologysts see the "hardware" but can not respond to every day life phenomens on the "software" level, analytical approches found the spirit but forgot the interpersonal, socialpsychology drives everything from the "social" and does not leave place for the person.

This is an "integrator" work, I beleive one of those, which will be the basis of the 21st century psychology and psychotherapy.

I hope it will be soon translated to several languages and initiate also base researches on the nature of "human present moments".