Paul,

Yes, me too. In the article I referred to, I liked the way he expands his notion of unformulated experience, moving toward a systems view, without using that language. Also consonant with views of memory, his unformulated experience is not a static notion of something already structured waiting to pop out or be discovered, but rather is viewed in a context in which experience is continuously created (constructed) even though some patterns (meanings) are "remarkably enduring" (as in "deep attractor states", using the language of systems theory).

In footnote 1, (p. 844), Don Stern says, " To put the point in conventional psychoanalytic language: unformulated experience can be highly structured- though never so structured that multiple interpretations are excluded. Even those structured meanings, though, remain processes. Even the most highly organized unformulated meanings are therefore, not static objects or ruts worn in the brain and never absolute, but predispositions toward certain kinds of meaning-making and away from others."

(Wasn't it Rappaport who long ago talked about process as structure with a slow rate of change, thus overcoming dichotomous arguments about structure and process?)

Anyway, I'm teaching a class today that has this article as a central focus, so I'm into it, but I can see why you are interested in his concept.

Judy