Mentalizing in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Josef Brockmann is a psychoanalyst and training analyst based in Frankfurt, Germany. He received advanced training in MBT with Bateman and Fonagy and has been an accredited MBT Practitioner at the Anna Freud Institute in London. He has accumulated many years of experience in psychotherapy research. Holger Kirsch is a specialist in psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and social medicine as well as a teaching analyst (DGPT/DGIP). He is a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt (EHD) and has his own private practice. Svenja Taubner is a psychoanalyst, supervisor, and MBT trainer (Anna Freud Center). She is Director of the Institute for Psychosocial Prevention at the University Hospital of Heidelberg University, full professor for psychosocial prevention, and the president of the MBT association for German-speaking countries (MBT-D-A-CH).

About the Authors

Foreword by Peter Fonagy

Introduction

1. Characteristics of a Modern Psychotherapy

1.1 The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy and MBT

1.2 Impact Factor Models

1.3 General Impact Factors and MBT

1.4 Specific Impact Factors in MBT

1.5 Integrative Impact Models and MBT as an Integrative Psychotherapy Method

2. Central Aspects of the Mentalizing Concept

2.1 Mentalization

2.2 Attachment Relationships as the Basis of Mentalization

2.3 Marked Affect Mirroring as Social Feedback

2.3 Epistemic Trust

2.5 Development of Mentalization

2.6 The Alien Self

2.7 Psychotherapy as a Threefold Communication System

3. Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT)

3.1 Mentalization as a Personality Function

3.2 Mentalization as a Multidimensional Construct

3.3 The Transdiagnostic and Transtheoretical Disorder Model of MBT Using Borderline Personality Disorder as an Example

3.4 Therapeutic Goals and Change Mechanism of MBT

3.5 The MBT Process and Content

3.6 The Therapeutic Stance in MBT

3.7 Core Interventions of MBT

3.8 MBT in a Case Study of an 18-Year-Old Man with BPD

4. Psychoanalysis and Mentalization

4.1 Mentalization and Its Influence on Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

4.2 Theoretical Implications

4.3 The Necessity of Psychoanalytic Understanding in the Mentalization Approach (and Vice Versa)

5. Mentalization in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

5.1 Treatment Goal: Making Unconscious Conscious and Mentalized Affectivity

5.2 The Therapeutic Relationship, Transference, and Countertransference

5.3 Interpretation and Insight (Content Perspective) or the Not-Knowing Standpoint (Process Perspective)

5.4 Regression or Working in the Here and Now

5.5 Defense and Resistance

5.6 Free Association or Structuring

5.7 An Integrative Treatment Model

6. Case Studies

6.1 Mentalized Affectivity

6.2 Epistemic Trust

6.3 The Alien Self

6.4 Severe Impairment of Mentalizing Abilities in the Presence of High Psychosocial Functioning

6.5 Summary

7. Take-Home Message

8. Instead of a Conclusion

The Mentalizing Skills of Therapists: Consequences for Education and Training

References