Influences on patients’ developing mentalization

Abstract

Analytic therapy enables patients to relive and repair failures to promote their mentalization by parental figures. However, therapists also fail temporarily to provide the patients with a growth-promoting environment when their patterns of reflexivity on the patients’ experience are undermined. These temporary failures create new opportunities for therapists to access unformulated knowledge about their patients’ experiences and enrich their reflexivity on them, and for the patients to promote their ability to hold themselves in their own minds.

Key words:

• reflexivity
• mentalizing
• holding in mind

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hanoch Yerushalmi

Hanoch Yerushalmi, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and serves as associate professor and chair of the Department of Community Mental Health at the University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. He has formerly been the director of the Student Counseling Center at the Hebrew University in Israel. He has published numerous articles on relational psychoanalytic therapy and supervision.