Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. By Peter Fonagy, György Gergely, Elliot L. Jurist, and Mary Target. New York:  Other Press, 2002.  578 pp.

This scholarly and substantial book focuses on the relation of “developmental work” to psychotherapy and psychopathology. By developmental work, the authors mean both new development

research literature and the process in therapy of rebuilding faulty development. The authors seek to integrate their scientific knowledge of psychological development with their experience as clinicians, a daunting task. They redefine attachment theory creatively and less rigidly than heretofore: the early environment is seen not just as a template for all later relationships, but also as determining the “depth” to which the social environment may be processed, and as facilitating or undermining the individual's ability to process or interpret information concerning later mental states. The book is divided into three overlapping areas: the theoretical, the developmental, and the clinical.

Of special interest to me as a child psychoanalyst is the excellent, comprehensive review of the studies contributing to an unfolding developmental picture of the child's understanding of mental life, minds, and psychic reality versus external reality. How does the child come to develop subjectivity, to know about intentions, beliefs, and emotions? The authors sequence the steps along this pathway in clear developmental perspective, pulling together studies from cognitive science, developmental psychology, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in a beautiful presentation of cuttingedge research in the development of theory of mind. Yet at times they do not credit others who have written in this domain with different terminology. For example, Ritvo and Solnit1 carefully studied the identificatory processes leading to affect regulation; Escalona2 emphasized the subjective rather than objective environment of the infant in her concept of the baby's “concrete experience” of the mother; Pine3 delineated the steps in early self formation; White4 highlighted self as agent with a focus on efficacy;