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In this highly readable and informative book, Nick Midgley and an international team of clinician-researchers explore the role of mentalization, ‘the ability to interpret the meaning of others’ behavior by considering underlying mental states and intentions’, in the treatment of childhood disorders. The authors, trained and accomplished psychodynamic practitioners, integrate psychodynamic principals with findings from attachment and affect-regulation theory, systemic family therapy and empirical studies of mentalization to offer the first comprehensive treatment guide to a time-limited mentalizing approach to work with children. Individually their research and clinical accomplishments are impressive, and together they find a singular voice in a text written with much compassion and careful consideration of the complexities involved in working with children.
Although initially developed as a treatment method for adults with personality disorders, Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) has its roots in child analysis. The authors rightly trace these to the early work of Anna Freud (1965) and her recognition of the therapist as not only a ‘transference object’ but also a ‘developmental object’, helping children to foster new capacities. Fonagy and Target (1996, 1998) later outlined a clinical approach, psychodynamic developmental therapy, which highlighted the importance of a capacity for playfulness and enhancing reflective functioning. In Psychoanalysis and Developmental Therapy Anne Hurry (1998) further delineated the shift away from ‘interpretation and insight’ to the restoration of developmental processes and the importance of a facilitating environment (Winnicott, 1965). Similar changes have been described by Alvarez (2012), with the analyst functioning as a ‘reclaiming object’ who is ‘enlivening, alerting, claiming and reclaiming’.
It is within this context that many child psychodynamic therapists will recognise elements of their current practice in MBT for children (M