Handbook of Mentalizing in Mental Health Practice

Bateman and Fonagy s Handbook of Mentalizing in Mental Health Practice offers a scholarly, clinically vivid and intellectually engaging treat for its readers. It adds specificity to the interventions of mentalization-based treatment and expands its application into new treatment settings, such as hospitals and brief treatments, and new patient populations, such as depressed patients and children. This book will be valuable reading for all mental health professionals who want to enrich their clinical practices and their understanding of processes of change. --John Gunderson, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Director, BPD Center for Treatment, Research and Training, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA

This is a remarkable book, a must read for anyone looking to bring the mentalizing approach into clinical practice. In this tour de force, Bateman and Fonagy offer us a brilliantly crafted and enormously useful guide to applying the principles of mentalization-based therapy in diverse settings and with diverse populations. Rich with clinical wisdom, science, theory, and deep humanity, this volume is sure to be an instant classic for beginning and experienced practitioners alike. --Arietta Slade, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Psychology, The City College and Graduate Center, the City University of New York; Visiting Research Scientist, Yale Child Study Center

Mentalizing is the fundamental human capacity to "read" one's own and others' mental states such as thoughts and feelings. The editors of Handbook of Mentalizing in Mental Health Practice have authored two previous books aimed at establishing mentalizing as a developmental and clinical concept. Here they further explore mentalizing as a fundamental psychological process and seek to extend its use across a wide range of disorders, particularly in the treatment of patients with personality disorders and in preventive intervention in childhood. The first part of the book helps the reader understand the impact of a mentalizing perspective on the treatment of patients in different psychotherapy contexts. The second part focuses on the patient, identifying effective techniques for a variety of illnesses including depression, trauma, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, and drug addiction. Throughout, the contributors persuasively argue that the promotion of "mind-mindedness" in both patient and clinician is critical to any therapy. Across modalities, Handbook of Mentalizing in Mental Health Practice is essential reading for mental health clinicians.