Affect Regulation, Mentalization and the Development of the Self

Peter Fonagy is Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Director of the Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology at University College London. He is Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre, London. He is a clinical psychologist and a training and supervising analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society in child and adult analysis. He has published over 200 chapters and articles and has authored or edited several books.

'A remarkable synthesis of developmental theory and research on the evolution of the child's capacity for metallization (reflective functioning), affect regulation, and the sense of the self, and the contributions of the development of these functions to the understanding and treatment of psychological disturbances in children and adults. An intellectual and clinical tour de force, integrating diverse theory and data from neurobiology, behavioural genetics, the philosophy of the mind, and psychosocial development, always with the focus on understanding the nature of severe psychological disturbances and their treatment in the psychotherapeutic context. This volume will have a profound impact on both clinical practice and clinical research.'- Sidney J. Blatt, Ph.D, Professor, Psychiatry and Psychology, Yale University'This book is already a classic. It puts psychoanalysis on the contemporary scientific map and permits a thoughtful combination of the different psychoanalytic schools. On top of that, it has huge implications for clinical practice. What more could one want?'- Paul Verhaeghe, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Ghent, Belgium'This is a book worth savoring, not just reading. The authors' breadth is truly staggering, traversing terrain from philosophy of mind, to developmental research on children's capacity to represent their own and others' mental states, to research on severe personality disorders, to clinical observations of infants, children and adults - all within a framework grounded in attachment theory. It is one of the first truly convincing efforts to show how the body of attachment research can actually influence the way we practice with many of our patients.' - Drew Westen'The four co-authors write in a clear single voice. Their collaboration makes the book stunning in its scope, powerfully reasoned, clinically rich in telling cases, and historically sophisticated...What an intellectual delight to have a book that stays in your mind, continues to challenge, and offers new directions for understanding.'- Ed Tronick, Ph.D., Chief of the Child Development Unit; Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

• Introduction -- Theoretical Perspectives -- Attachment and Reflective Function: Their Role in Self-Organization -- Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Affects and Affect Regulation -- The Behavior Geneticist's Challenge to a Psychosocial Model of the Development of Mentalization -- Developmental Perspectives -- The Social Biofeedback Theory of Affect-Mirroring: The Development of Emotional Self-Awareness and Self-Control in Infancy -- The Development of an Understanding of Self and Agency -- "Playing with Reality": Developmental Research and a Psychoanalytic Model for the Development of Subjectivity -- Marked Affect-Mirroring and the Development of Affect-Regulative Use of Pretend Play -- Developmental Issues in Normal Adolescence and Adolescent Breakdown -- Clinical Perspectives -- The Roots of Borderline Personality Disorder in Disorganized Attachment -- Psychic Reality in Borderline States -- Mentalized Affectivity in the Clinical Setting -- Epilogue