This book attempts to create a dialogue between the infant as revealed by the experimental approach and as clinically reconstructed, in the service of resolving the contradiction between theory and reality. It describes the several ways that organization can form in the infant's mind.

Preface -- Introduction to the Paperback Edition -- The Questions and Their Background -- Exploring the Infant's Subjective Experience: A Central Role for the Sense of Self -- Perspectives and Approaches to Infancy -- The Four Senses of Self -- The Sense of an Emergent Self -- The Sense of a Core Self: I. Self versus Other -- The Sense of a Core Self: II. Self with Other -- The Sense of a Subjective Self: I. Overview -- The Sense of a Subjective Self: II. Affect Attunement -- The Sense of a Verbal Self -- Some Clinical Implications -- The “Observed Infant” as Seen with a Clinical Eye -- Some Implications for the Theories Behind Therapeutic Reconstructions -- Implications for the Therapeutic Process of Reconstructing a Developmental Past -- Epilogue