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“Mentalization”, a quintessentially human psychological process, central to understanding and interpreting the behaviors and actions of our selves and others, has over the past several decades become the focus of considerable interest within contemporary psychoanalysis (Fonagy & Target, 1998). Often used interchangeably with the operationally defined research construct “reflective function” RF (Steele, Murphy, & Steele, 2015), appropriately developed Mentalization is understood by analysts of many clinical traditions to be a hall mark of emotional health and associated with interpersonal/attachment security (Allen, Fonagy, & Bateman, 2008). So basic to our functioning, the “interpersonal interpretive function” of humans has been endorsed as a process critical to social/emotional survival (Fonagy, 2002).
Reflective Function (Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Moran, & Higgit, 1991; Steele et al., 2015) as a research construct, has, over the past two decades provided us with an abundance of data which has added considerably to our knowledge base, increasing our awareness of factors influencing and correlated with the development of these capacities. In turn, the robust findings of much of that research has further informed our awareness of the importance of this focus for practicing clinicians.
Despite the growing literature in this area, many practicing clinicians continue to grapple with the integration of these ideas into their clinical work. Some wonder what these terms actually refer to. Others ask whether working with a “Mentalization” sensibility offers anything new to those who have provided traditional psychodynamic child, adolescent and parent psychotherapy for decades. Does one understand the mutative aspect of the process in different terms, or is the process somehow different if one works with “mentalization” in mind? While developmental psychology and attachment research have increased our understanding of the ways in which we develop our social/emotional interpretiv