Donnel Stern, Ph.D.
Dr. Stern’s first psychoanalytic article, on unformulated experience, appeared in 1983, and he has been writing, teaching, and editing ever since. He has addressed such topics as the interpersonal field, relational freedom, and witnessing.
His most recent book is On Coming into Possession of Oneself: Transformations of the Interpersonal Field (2024). He has written four other books, co-edited four more, and published more than 100 psychoanalytic articles and book chapters.
He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and is the Founder and Editor of the book series Psychoanalysis in a New Key at Routledge, which has over 90 titles in print. Dr. Stern teaches, supervises, and speaks worldwide, maintains a private practice in New York City, and leads private study groups.
Friday, January 30, 2026
9:30 a.m.
What Does “Unconscious” Mean? Unformulated Experience and the Interpersonal Field
The theory of unformulated experience posits that unconscious process is composed of potential experience–the possibilities for what conscious meanings might become. Unformulated experience is vague, global, relatively undifferentiated, and affectively charged. The first half of this presentation describes this idea as it was originally proposed in the 1980s, underlining the role of the interpersonal field.
The second half of the presentation is a discussion of the modifications of the theory introduced in recent years. The initial theory was an account of reflection—i.e., whether or not a meaning can be formulated in verbal language. Now unformulated experience is defined as that which has not yet become personally meaningful. The formulation of experience makes it available in the spontaneous construction of creative living.
