Group Process as a Holding Environment Facilitating the Development of the Parental Reflective Function: Commentary on the Article by Arietta Slade

In Recent Years There has been a Significant Increase in the creation of clinical intervention models that have integrated findings from the past three decades of developmental research. Attachment and infancy research, in particular, has sparked the minds of many psychoanalytically oriented clinicians. Research findings have influenced new approaches to intervention with infants, children, parents, and adults. Dr. Slade's article provides an excellent description of two such programs that she and her colleagues have developed at the Yale Child Study Center. What is unique about these two programs is that they are grounded in a single unifying theoretical construct; namely, the explicit attempt to engage and enhance parental reflective functioning.

Dr. Slade suggests that early intervention programs are effective to the degree to which they have successfully enhanced parental reflective functioning. She describes the operationalization of reflective functioning theory, including consideration of both the developmental stages of reflective