stern 2004 negotiation journal

The Present Moment as a Critical Moment

Daniel N. Stern

Like a musical interlude, the present moment hovers between becom-ing the past and progressing into the future. Critical moments, for theauthor, are moments in which the parties are fully in the present orthe “now,” caught in a pivotal space where any action, or even inac-tion, will change the destiny of the situation and the actors themselves.It is a transformative journey, taken together, that starts with momentof suspense, and traverses a landscape of emotion and intention wherea world of change becomes possible.

The process of negotiating and the process of psychotherapy seem to beat polar opposites. In negotiations, to get the best results one does not showtheir complete hand, neither in the beginning nor at the end. Also, one doesnot reveal their strategy. In psychotherapy, the idea is to show your handas completely and rapidly as possible, using a shared strategy. Nonetheless,in a negotiation one’s hand must be progressively revealed, at least partially.If not, there is nothing to negotiate. And in psychotherapy, there are obsta-cles to revealing one’s “hand”or life experiences: defenses, fears, inhibitions,shame, guilt, and disapprobation, among others. So, in effect, the patient’s“hand” gets revealed only progressively, along with emotional risks and compromises.

Negotiation Journal April 2004 36510.1111/j.0748-4526.2004.00000.x © 2004 Blackwell Publishing

Daniel N. Stern, M.D., is honorary professor of psychology at the University of Geneva,Switzerland, and adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Cornell Medical School. He is author of the forthcoming book, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life (New York:W.W. Norton, 2004). His e-mail address is [email protected].

Column

There is another similarity that will occupy us even more. In bothprocesses, one does not know the final form that the process moves toward.It is discovered en route. Nor does one know in advance the exact course(and strategy) that will get you there. In spite of the best plans, one doesnot know in detail where one is going or how to get there. It is this similarity that I will explore.

The Time Parameters of ChangeMost changes in the life of humans are relatively sudden, occurring in qual-itative leaps. Changes in development of people, institutions, relationships,and emotional atmosphere, for example, are quite discontinuous, comparedto growth. And even growth has its spurts. This reality forces us to considerthe time frame of experiences during which the larger trajectory starts tobend. When and how does change appear on the scene all of a sudden, andhow? After all, a critical moment is not an infinitely thin slice of time. It isa moment that has a duration wherein something happens, even if it lastsonly seconds. Let us look at this moment.

The duration of a present or critical moment depends on how we con-ceive of the passage of time. The ancient Greek concept of “chronos” is thevision of time that we use in the natural sciences, and in most of psychol-ogy. In this view, the present instant is a moving point in time headed onlytoward a future; it does not matter whether the course of time is viewedas a straight line or a circle or a spiral, the present instant is always moving,inexorably and evenly. As it moves, it eats up the future and leaves in itswake the past.The present instant itself is very short; too short for anythingto take place without immediately becoming the past. Effectively, there isno present. There is no “now” in which something could unfold heraldinga change.

Both the natural sciences and psychology have mostly been able to livewith the view of the present described by chronos. However, commonexperience — our subjective sense of life as lived from moment to moment— does not sit well with the idea that the present has no temporal thick-ness. The experience of listening to music, watching dance, or interactingwith someone could not tolerate it. Life, at the local level of moments insequence, simply doesn’t feel that way.

Present moments (and critical moments that effectuate change) musthave both a duration in which something happens and, at the same time,take place during a subjective “now.” Examples make this apparent contra-diction clear.

A short musical phrase is the basic process unit of the experience ofhearing music. A phrase is the musical analog of a present moment in ordi-nary life. A musical phrase is intuitively grasped as a global unit with bound-aries. It has a duration that is sensed (usually in the range between two andeight seconds). And most interestingly, the musical phrase, as heard, is felt

366 Daniel N. Stern The Present Moment as a Critical Moment

to occur during a moment that is not instantaneous, but also not parceledout in time into sequential bits like the written notes. Rather it is a contin-uous, enduring, single, flowing whole, occurring during a “now.”

A musical phrase stands as a global entity that cannot be divided upwithout losing its gestalt. You cannot take the equivalent of a photographof a heard musical phase as it passes. It is not a summary of the notes thatmake it up. It takes its form only over time. The mind imposes a form onthe phrase as it unfolds. The melodic and/or rhythmic line is grasped whileit passes. In fact, its possible endings are intuited before the phrase is com-pleted, while it is still unfolding. That is to say, the future (as well as theimmediate past which is still echoing) is implied at each instant of the phrase’s journey through the present moment. It is an example of thephilosopher Edmund Husserl’s tri-partate present: the past of the present(retention); the present instant; and the future of the present (protention),all occurring in a subjectively coherent “now.”

The same happens during interactions. The moves of the interactionare the phrases, making up each present moment. The same will apply tointeractions that are composed of phrase-like groupings in verbal and non-verbal behavior seen in ordinary life, psychotherapy, and any negotiation,dyadic or with a group.

To view the present moment, a different sense of the flow of time isneeded. The ancient Greeks conceived of a subjective stretch of time inwhich events demanded action or were propitious for action. They calledthis “kairos.” Kairos is a moment in which events come together and meet,and the meeting comes into awareness as a coherent aggregate such thatintentional action must be taken now to alter your destiny. If no action istaken, your destiny will be changed anyway, but differently, because youdid not act. It is a small time window of opportunity for action or inactionrelative to a situation. Kairos also means the coming into being of a newstate of things. One of the origins of the word comes from shepherds watch-ing the stars. As the night progresses and the stars turn in the sky, theyappear to rise and then fall against the horizon. The moment during thenight when a star has reached its apogee and appears to change directionfrom ascending to descending — that is its kairos.

Every present moment is a “critical moment;”some more, some less so.And every critical moment is a moment of kairos. This is because everymoment creates the context in which the next moment will take place. Andthe immediate context is crucial in determining the direction and final formof what will happen. In other words, each present moment influences thedestiny of where things will go next. And the next moment will serve asthe context for the moment that follows, and so on. Perhaps what deter-mines how “critical” a moment is, is how far into the future its context willremain active in influencing the moments that follow. There are momentsof kairos with a big K or a small one.

Negotiation Journal April 2004 367

Psychotherapy as a Model for Change in Processes of NegotiationA group of psychotherapists, calling ourselves the Boston Change ProcessStudy Group (Boston CPSG), study the process of change in psychotherapy.This change process may provide some parallels with many kinds of inter-action, some negotiations included, where two or more people are tryingto arrive at a goal, but where the goal cannot be precisely known inadvance. Only some of its boundaries are preconceived.The actual final goal(not the desired goal) is to be created not discovered, because it does notyet exist a priori. And the process for getting to the goal is created as theyproceed, within certain boundaries.

To conduct our study we focused on what we call the “local level.”This is the scale of small events that last only seconds, but act as the critical points of change. Thus the importance of the present moment andcritical moment as the stage on which change will show itself.

The goal in psychotherapy is to share similar mental landscapes so thatone can understand and be understood. We call this sharing of subjectiveexperience “intersubjectivity.” It includes both the explicit (verbal) meaningof what one says and the implicit meaning, which is nonverbal and moreconcerned with feelings. Sometimes the more important action is in theimplicit, sometimes in the explicit. The mix is crucial. In any event, “inter-subjective sharing” is the primary goal. It occurs verbally and nonverballyat the local level. The units of interaction at this level are called relationalmoves. The immediate goal of relational moves is to adjust or regulate the“intersubjective field,” that is, the shared mental/feeling landscape. Thesemoves can consist of a spoken phrase, a silence, a gesture, or shift in posture,or a facial expression — no different from what makes up a negotiation.

We call the process of arriving at these goals “moving along.”This termis meant to capture the forward movement, relational move by relationalmove, as well as its frequent wanderings, wrong turns, and surprising shiftsin direction. We view these wanderings as “sloppiness” in the negotiatingprocess. “Sloppiness” results from the interaction of two or more mindsworking in a “hit-miss-repair-elaborate” fashion to cocreate and share similarworlds. Because the process of chaining relational moves together (some-times very loosely) is largely spontaneous and unpredictable from one moveto the next, there are many mismatches, derailments, misunderstandings,and indeterminacies. These “mistakes” require a process of repair.

Nonetheless, sloppiness is not an error or noise in the system but ratheran inherent feature of interactions. The sloppiness of the process throwsnovel, unexpected often messy elements into the dialogue or group dis-cussion. But these can be used to create new possibilities. Sloppiness is notto be avoided or regretted but rather is necessary to understand the almostunlimited cocreativity of the moving along process (or the negotiatingprocess).


Sloppiness would be of little value if it did not occur within a cocre-ative process. Both the sloppiness and its repair or unexpected usage arethe product of minds working together to maximize coherence. (If movingalong or negotiating could follow a straight predictable line there would beno need to negotiate.) Along with other unplanned emergent events, slop-piness and cocreation bring into being the surprise discoveries that pushthe negotiation to its uniqueness. Potentially, they are among its most cre-ative elements. These elements had no previous existence even in a latentform. They arise from the negotiating process. This is why in a psy-chotherapeutic dialogue, sloppiness creates something that needs to belived through and used rather than understood and analyzed. Its psycho-dynamic relevance may be minimal because it is mainly a product of thepresent interaction, and less the result of a reactivated past. Similarly, in anegotiation each step is more the result of the immediately prior inter-active moment than of the original negotiating strategy.

Moving along can lead to sudden dramatic therapeutic changes (orshifts in a negotiation) by way of “now moments”and “moments of meeting.”The intersubjective field gets suddenly reorganized at key present moments.This occurs when the current state of implicit relational knowledge issharply thrown into question and basic implicit assumptions about the relationship are placed at stake.

These moments capture the essence of kairos. A new state is cominginto being or threatening to do so, with consequences for the future. Thereis novelty and an “upset,” as well as a mounting emotional charge. The situation emerges unexpectedly and something must be done (including the option of doing nothing). This confluence of elements results in theemergence of a “now moment.”

Suppose that a patient has been in psychoanalytic therapy on thecouch for a few years and has expressed concern from time to time thatshe does not know what the therapist is doing back there — sleeping,knitting, making faces.Then one morning without warning the patient lyingon the couch says, “I want to sit up and see your face.” And with no further ado, she sits up and turns around. The patient and therapist findthemselves staring at each other in startled silence.

That is a now moment. The patient did not know she was going to doit; certainly not that day, that moment, in that way. It was a spontaneouseruption. Nor did the therapist anticipate it, just then, in that way. However,now they find themselves in a novel interpersonal and intersubjective situation. Kairos hangs heavy.

When such a major emergent property declares itself, it immediatelyoccupies the center stage. A now moment is so called because there is animmediate sense that the existing intersubjective field is threatened, that animportant change in the relationship is possible (for good or ill), and thatthe pre-existing nature of the relationship has been put on the table for


renegotiation.These realizations (most often felt rather than cognized) makethe atmosphere highly charged. The therapist feels disarmed and the levelof anxiety rises because he or she really does not know what to do. Usualtechnique is not up to the job. Also, in such moments the participants arepulled fully into the present moment that is staring them in the face, now.Often in therapy, one is not fully “there” in the present. One is evenly hov-ering in the past, present, and future. But as soon as a now moment arrives,all else is dropped and each partner stands with both feet in the present.Presentness fills the time and space. There is only now. Usually the ongoingpresent is a nonsensory, implicit aspect of experience. In a now moment,it becomes felt and explicit.

There are many types of now moments, within, outside of, or at theedges of the therapeutic frame. However, a clear frame is necessary for thisprocess to take on meaning. In brief, the essence of the now moment isthat the established nature of the ongoing relationship and the usual wayof being with each other (or doing business) is implicitly called into ques-tion. Because it is an emergent property its appearance cannot be predicted.It cannot be prepared for. And the usual techniques or ways of handling theinteraction are not necessarily applicable. Something else is needed toresolve the condition of suspense that has been created by the nowmoment. The something else is a “moment of meeting.” It is the momentthat resolves the crisis of the now moment.

The moment of meeting seeks to use the disorganization of the nowmoment to enlarge the intersubjective field in ways not thought of before.Intersubjective “fittedness” is sought, where both partners share an experi-ence and they know it, implicitly. A moment of meeting requires an authen-tic response finely matched to the momentary local situation. It must bespontaneous and carry the therapist’s personal signature, so to speak. Inthat way, it reaches beyond a technical, neutral response and becomes aspecific fit to a specific situation.

Take for example the patient who suddenly sat up to look at her ther-apist. Right after the patient sat up, the two found themselves looking ateach other intently. A silence prevailed. The therapist, without knowingexactly what she was going to do (here comes the moment of meeting),softened her face slowly and let the suggestion of a smile form around her mouth. She then leaned her head forward slightly and said, “Hello.”The patient continued to look at her. They remained locked in a mutual gaze for several seconds. After a moment, the patient lay down again and continued her work on the couch, but more profoundly and in a newkey, which opened up new material. The change was dramatic in their ther-apeutic work together. It was a nodal point when a “quantal” change in theintersubjective field was achieved. In dynamic systems theory it representsan irreversible shift into a new state. After a successful moment of meeting,


the therapy resumes its process of moving along, but does so in a newlyexpanded intersubjective field that allows for different possibilities.

It is essential to add that this moment of meeting, in the previousexample, was never fully discussed until years later when the patient saidin passing that the “Hello” was a nodal point in her therapy. It made herrealize at some implicit level that her analyst was “on her side” and “trulyopen to her.” For her, it changed their relationship. However, this momentwas not verbalized at the time, nor was it ever interpreted during the treat-ment. It had worked its magic implicitly.

The moment of meeting is one of the key events in bringing aboutchange. A moment of meeting creates an experience with another that ispersonally undergone, that is, actually lived through in the present. Whenthis is done by two or more people, I call the experience a “shared feelingvoyage.” It is a kind of journey, lasting seconds, taken by two or morepeople, roughly together, through time and space.

During a shared feeling voyage (which is the moment of meeting) twopeople traverse together through a feeling landscape as it unfolds in realtime. The present moment is also a lived emotional story with a beginning,middle, and end. During this several-second journey, the participants ridethe crest of the present instant as it crosses the span of the present moment,from its horizon of the past to its horizon of its future. As they move, theypass through a microemotional narrative-like landscape with its hills andvalleys of affects, along its river of intentionality, which runs throughout,and over its peak of dramatic crisis. It is a voyage taken as the presentunfolds. A passing subjective landscape is created that makes up a world ina grain of sand.

Although this shared voyage lasts only for the seconds of a moment ofmeeting, that is enough. It has been lived through together.The participantshave created a shared private world. And having entered that world, theyfind that when they leave it, their relationship is changed. There has beena discontinuous leap. The border between order and chaos has beenredrawn. Coherence and complexity have been enlarged.They have createdan expanded intersubjective field that opens up new possibilities of waysof being with one another. They are changed and they are linked differentlyfrom having changed one another.

Shared feeling voyages are so simple and natural, yet very hard toexplain or even talk about.We need another language that is steeped in tem-poral dynamics. This is paradoxical because these experiences provide thenodal moments in our lives. Shared feeling voyages are one of life’s moststartling yet normal events, when our interpersonal world is changed ineither a small step or a leap. In psychotherapy they are often the momentsmost remembered years later, those that most changed the course oftherapy.


What we are talking about is basically as simple as “doing somethingtogether.” A moment of meeting is a particular case of doing somethingtogether. It has some special features. The minds of the participants mustbe partially permeable to each other so as to enhance intersubjectivity inthe sense of affectively participating in another’s experience.Thus, they canmaximally share the same mental and feeling landscape for a short while.The emergent issue that arises must have some consequence and thus becharged with affect. It must qualify as a moment of kairos so as to get ele-vated as a sort of peak amidst the other surrounding moves and presentmoments. The something done together must include a shared time voyageof riding the feeling shapes of a present moment across its short span.Whenall these conditions are met, a nodal event occurs that can change a life —and presumably the course of a negotiation.

Practically speaking, how can this be useful; and, given that it involvesspontaneity and authenticity, can it be taught? Yes and no. Once the generalidea about change processes presented here has been taught and assimi-lated, one gains a different perspective or vision about the process one isengaged in. It is this shift in perspective that makes the difference. Onebecomes more ready to identify, and even expect, key moments of changein an ongoing process. With that, one becomes more ready to alter strategyin midstream. And one becomes better able to tolerate the anxiety thatinevitably accompanies these moments of shift. In addition, one is givengreater “permission” to use themselves, their spontaneity and authenticity,at key moments when something beyond strategy and technique is calledfor to move the process along.

NOTES

This column was based on, and parts excerpted from, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy andEveryday Life by Daniel N. Stern (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004).

The author would like to thank the Boston Change Process Study Group for their contribu-tions to this column.The current members of the Boston CPSG are N. Bruschweiler-Stern, K. Lyons-Ruth, A. Morgan, J. Nahum, L.S. Sander, and D.N. Stern


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