Childhood has long been recognized as a developmental process. This book examines parenting through a similar lens, offering mental health providers a mentalizing framework for working with parents at all stages of parental development. Parenting is a developmental process that fluctuates and transforms throughout the lifespan. To support working with parents, the authors present a mentalizing approach that considers the current socio-cultural environment and its impact on the developmental process of parenting. This approach integrates a wealth of psychodynamic clinical research, theory, and practice. This book provides the reader with principles to inform evaluation, formulation, and treatment in their work with parents. It provides clinical examples followed by clinical formulations offering illustrations of the application of one approach to diverse clinical challenges in the context of working with parents, grandparents, and other caregivers.

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.

*Concise and needed practical work on mentalization and affect, a hot topic in therapy. *The better our capacity to make sense of our own and others' emotional processes, the more resilient and flexible we are. *Describes a range of ways to help patients access and reflect on emotions within any form of therapy. *Includes the Mentalized Affectivity Scale (MAS) so therapists can perform consistent assessments. *Of particular interest to psychodynamic and psychoanalytic practitioners.

*Concise and needed practical work on mentalization and affect, a hot topic in therapy. *The better our capacity to make sense of our own and others' emotional processes, the more resilient and flexible we are. *Describes a range of ways to help patients access and reflect on emotions within any form of therapy. *Includes the Mentalized Affectivity Scale (MAS) so therapists can perform consistent assessments. *Of particular interest to psychodynamic and psychoanalytic practitioners.