Daniel Stern (psychologist)
Daniel Stern ( born August 16, 1934 in New York City; † November 12, 2012 in Geneva, Switzerland ) was a psychoanalyst and child and adolescent analyst one of the leading specialists in infant research.
He took as his empirical infant research to a psychoanalytically oriented understanding of the personality, but observed no everyday situations, as was practiced by his psychoanalytic predecessors, but also created experimental situations. Stern was awarded in 1999 with the International Sigmund Freud Award for Psychotherapy.
Research and Theory
Star differed in the newborn immediately after the first few weeks after birth between six states of the psyche and the body of the infant:
- Regular sleep with closed eyes and regular breathing
- Irregular sleep with movements of the face and limbs
- Half supervisor Condition: The eyes are open, but there is no activity.
- Guard Activity: The eyes are wide open and track moving objects.
- Wake movements with diffuse motor movements
- Discomfort, which is expressed by crying
His research has been carried out in the fourth phase. Since infants can not of course be questioned, Daniel Stern showed the baby pictures, to measure its visual preferences based on the duration of the observation of the images. Pictures of the mother were longer viewed as images of other people. It Daniel Stern saw the evidence of the adoption of a pre-verbal, subjective experience of the infant. His theory assumed that there is a self that exists long before a self-confidence and before language. This self is characterized by a sense of wholeness, intentionality, a primitive understanding of time and activity.
Through his research, he developed a theory in which there are four (or five ) forms of self-esteem, build on each other and are maintained throughout life. His theory was building to the point of a model of the development phases and the shoot. Critics doubt the empirical infant research of Daniel Stern, as it in fact refers to the waking activity only to a phase.
Also, many think his research were inadequate, since it is only about emotions and deeper feelings would be excluded. The results of psychoanalytic infant research were not included by Daniel Stern.
Theses star to the development of self-
Based on his research, Daniel Stern divided the emergence of the self in the following phases:
Emergent self-
" Touching an object can visual identification of the object, without ever having seen it, allow [ ... ] Stern defended the thesis that infants possess the preformed ability to make such integrations, and also born with the desire and the ability be to extract abstract representations of the primary perception properties. "
Core Self
The core self is the experience of so-called four invariants ahead:
- Self- authorship: For example, to relive that it is dark when the child closes his eyes.
- Self- consistency: The feeling of a physical whole being as the center of action.
- Selbstaffektivität: Experiencing always feel like qualities.
- Selbstgeschichtlichkeit: feeling of perpetual existence, which allows to change and yet remain the same person.
Subjective self-
" The intersubjective self is extracted from the frequent episodes and considered the internal working model of the emerging self. The one working model that can best be summed up most episodes is constitutive. A person may, for example, the [ ... ] have a working model of himself, which assumes that the average object lovingly responds, proud of successes and failures in responding supportively. Such a model would be mapped as after all, basic trust '. "
In other words, the perception of the child is extended so that all previous transactions are subjective and self and other people have their sensations, the ( partial) differ from those of the child. This raises the question of how this distinctive opportunity arises or can be as the internal states of others " read and feel". Are important according to Stern the following three elements:
Amodal perception
The amodal perception is used to filter the common from the different perceptions. Common features star by intensity, time and shape, without it being necessary as explained by this artificial division of the action in individual phenomena.
Vitality affects
These are emotions that bring vital feelings. In contrast to the so-called categorical affects that certain emotions have as content (anger, sadness, joy, etc.), vitality effects have no definable categories, but are most likely to be described in metaphors ( " feel elated ," " burst of energy before " " do not come in the aisles, "" be devastated "). These different feelings, to feel alive, are readable by others through movement, gestures, facial expressions.
Affect - Attunement (vote)
The terminology is difficult to translate and says the immensely complex process, as two people agree in their rhythm and their feelings to each other and then share inner states with each other. It should be run would be here among other things the game with amodal correspondences between mother and child, the reaction of the mother of the child's movements into sounds, rhythm and joyful mood of the child are implemented in nod etc. This sharing of the internal condition causes the production of similarities through fun interaction on an amodal level.
Verbal self-
" To the 15 to 18 months, the child developed a new subjective form of representation, which is related to the fact that it can participate in the global knowledge of the other, in the [sic it symbolically reflects knowledge through language, communicates, shares and even creates new. "