Sharing and Other Illusions : Asymmetry in

Abstract

This chapter tackles the question of interpersonal understanding from the point of view of so-called “moments of meeting.” Coined by Daniel Stern and his colleagues, this term refers to specific and particularly intense experiential situations, where two (or more) persons attune to each other’s affective experiences, thus “cocreating” an experiential area that exists to these two individuals exclusively—a “shared private world,” as Stern puts it (Stern, 2004). While moments of meeting have attracted a lot of interest in research on psychotherapeutic change, clinical effectivity, and outcome, the usefulness of the concept in nonclinical discussions has been overlooked. The chapter fills in this lacuna by underlining the applicability of the concept of descriptions of everyday experiences of emotional sharing. The core argument is that moments of meeting have an asymmetric structure that complicates the structure of self-other relationships. By opening new perspectives to interpersonal understanding—its successes and shortcomings—this chapter contributes both to nonclinical and clinical discussions.