In a brilliant examination of the frontiers of human emotion and cognition, four prominent psychoanalysts combine the perspectives of developmental psychology, attachment theory and psychoanalytic technique. The result of this marriage of disciplines is a bold, energetic and ultimately encouraging vision for the psychoanalytic treatment.

This book focuses on the crucial importance of developmental work to psychotherapy and psychopathology. It offers an account of psychotherapy to integrate scientific knowledge of psychological development and represents psychological states in the minds of infants, children, adolescents, and adults.

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.