Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self

by Peter Fonagy, Gyorgy Gergely, Elliot Jurist, Mary Target

Overview

Winner of the 2003 Gradiva Award and the 2003 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship

Arguing for the importance of attachment and emotionality in the developing human consciousness, four prominent analysts explore and refine the concepts of mentalization and affect regulation. Their bold, energetic, and encouraging vision for psychoanalytic treatment combines elements of developmental psychology, attachment theory, and psychoanalytic technique. Drawing extensively on case studies and recent analytic literature to illustrate their ideas, Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, and Target offer models of psychotherapy practice that can enable the gradual development of mentalization and affect regulation even in patients with long histories of violence or neglect.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590514610
Publisher:	Other Press, LLC
Publication date:	09/07/2010
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	592
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., F.B.A., is Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Director of the Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology at Univesity College London.

Gyorgy Gergely, Ph.D., is Director of the Developmental Psychology Laboratory of the Psychology Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Mary Target, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in Psychoanalysis at University College London.

Elliot L. Jurist, Ph.D., is Director of the PhD Program in Cinical Psychology, CUNY, and Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.

Table of Contents

	About the Authors	vii
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	1
Part I	Theoretical Perspectives
Chapter 1	Attachment and Reflective Function: Their Role in Self-Organization	23
Chapter 2	Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Affects and Affect Regulation	65
Chapter 3	The Behavior Geneticist's Challenge to a Psychosocial Model of the Development of Mentalization	97
Part II	Developmental Perspectives
Chapter 4	The Social Biofeedback Theory of Affect-Mirroring: The Development of Emotional Self-Awareness and Self-Control in Infancy	145
Chapter 5	The Development of an Understanding of Self and Agency	203
Chapter 6	"Playing with Reality": Developmental Research and a Psychoanalytic Model for the Development of Subjectivity	253
Chapter 7	Marked Affect-Mirroring and the Development of Affect-Regulative Use of Pretend Play	291
Chapter 8	Developmental Issues in Normal Adolescence and Adolescent Breakdown	317
Part III	Clinical Perspectives
Chapter 9	The Roots of Borderline Personality Disorder in Disorganized Attachment	343
Chapter 10	Psychic Reality in Borderline States	373
Chapter 11	Mentalized Affectivity in the Clinical Setting	435
	Epilogue	469
	References	481
	Index	549

Editorial Reviews

"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, Chief of the Child Development Unit, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

"This is a book worth savoring, not just reading."
-Drew Westen, Director, Adolescent and Adult Personality Programs, Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, Boston University

"This book is already a classic."
-Paul Verhaeghe, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Ghent, Belgium

"An intellectual and clinical tour de force. This book will have a profound impact on both clinical practice and clinical research."
-Sidney J. Blatt, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, Yale University

From the Publisher