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....

Every new parent wants to know what the infant's experience is really like. In Diary of a Baby, renowned infant psychiatrist Daniel Stern brings us closer than ever before to penetrating a young child's consciousness. In alternating sections of evocative prose, representing the baby's own voice, and explanatory text, Daniel Stern draws on his research findings and years of clinical experience to re-create the baby's world. Diary of a Baby, with a new introduction by the author, can be read alongside Dr. Stern's book on the motherhood experience The Birth of a Mother....