A clinical series
Syllabus
Course Description
Mentalization is a therapeutic model for treating at risk parents and children who have experienced trauma, abuse, and neglect, also known by the name “reflective functioning” or “reflective parenting”.
In recent years, attachment and mentalization theory have been used to guide and inform clinical work with complex, vulnerable adults, and children, who struggle to make sense of their own experience or to understand and reflect upon the thoughts and feelings of others. Traumatized parents often have difficulty reflecting upon their children’s thoughts and feelings, at great cost to the child’s sense of trust and safety in the world. Mentalization, and particularly parental mentalization, is a key factor in parent child relationship and is thought of as promoting healthy child socioemotional development. It involves the parent’s willingness to imagine the child’s inner experiences and to see things from the child’s perspective, as well as inferring the child’s mental states from observing the child’s behavior. Yet, a parents’ ability to mentalize depends partially on the degree to which the parent’s mind was minded by a significant other, as well as on the parent’s current stress level.
The current series will review the relationship between attachment, parental mentalization and parental reflective functioning, provide examples of collapses in mentalization in the parent/child relationship and discuss ways we can work with high-risk parents and children with histories of significant and often chronic developmental trauma. The goal is to learn how to enhance parents mentalization capacities to allow them to better understand their children’s challenging behaviors and to better address their regulation needs. The series will also address how to use mentalization practice with abused and neglected children.
Course topics
- The basics of attachment, metallization, and reflective functioning theory
- The dimensions of Mentalization – Implicit and Explicit/Verbal and Embodied
- Introduction to the Family Cycle and it’s therapeutic use with parents and children
- Intergenerational trauma example and Family Cycle Workshop: the ways complex trauma impacts children and parent’s capacity to mentalize
- Case Presentations
Times & Dates
5 sessions, Tuesdays 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, 15 hours total.
Dates: Sep 6th, Sep 20th, Oct 4th, Oct 11th and Oct 18th
Location: Virtually.
Zoom link for all 5 sessions:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87554378344
Agenda
9/6/22 – Attachment, Mentalization and Reflective Functioning
In this lecture I will define mentalizing and reflective functioning, describe their role in the development of secure attachment and other positive developments. I will then define non-mentalizing and pre-mentalizing and describe and their role in the development of an insecure attachment and other negative outcomes for children and adolescents.
Recommended Reading:
Slade, A. (2005). Parental reflective functioning: An introduction. Attachment & human development, 7(3), 269-281. Click here
Parent Development Interview – Revised
Adult Attachment Interview Protocol
The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire
9/20/22 – Verbal Mentalization, Embodied Mentalization and Spotting Collapses in Mentalization
In this lecture I will provide concrete examples of verbal mentalization, embodied mentalization and collapses in mentalization. We will then discuss practical application of clinical techniques to enhance verbal and embodied mentalization, and to mediate collapses in mentalization.
Recommended Reading:
Allen, J. G., Bleiberg, E., & Haslam-Hopwood, T. (2003). Mentalizing as a compass for treatment. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 67(1), 1-4. Click here
10/4/22 – The Family Cycle: An Activity to Enhance Mentalization
In this lecture I will define complex and/or attachment trauma, review the literature on the impact of trauma on parental mentalization, link traumatic adaptations to parenting, provide an overview of the Family Cycle activity and describe its use with children and parents. Students will understand the theoretical foundations of the activity and participate in a discussion using a case study.
Recommended Reading:
Stob, V., Slade, A., Brotnow, L., Adnopoz, J., & Woolston, J. (2019). The family cycle: An activity to enhance parents’ mentalization in children’s mental health treatment. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 18(2), 103-119. Click here
Stob, V., Slade, A., Adnopoz, J., & Woolston, J. (2020). The family cycle: Breaking the intergenerational transmission of trauma through mentalizing. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 19(3), 255-270. Click here
10/11/22 – Intergenerational trauma, Stress and Mental Health
In this lecture we will view a short film and use the family from the film as a shared client to discuss the impact of inter-generational trauma, stress, and mental health problems, identify collapses in mentalization, conceptualize the Family Cycle for the family in the film, and discuss points of intervention. Class members will be broken up into small groups to respond to a series of reflective questions about the film. We will end with a whole group discussion of larger reflective themes highlighted by the family in the film.
Recommended Reading:
Camoirano, A. (2017). Mentalizing makes parenting work: A review about parental reflective functioning and clinical interventions to improve it. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 14. Click here
Courtois, C. A. (2004). Complex trauma, complex reactions: Assessment and treatment. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 41(4), 412–425. Click here
10/18/22 – Case Presentations Using the Family Cycle
In this lecture students will create a draft hypothesis of the Family Cycle for a client they are currently working with or have worked with in the past. Students will participate in a discussion of how the clinical application of a mentalizing framework has impacted their clinical formulation of their client, identify patterns of collapses in mentalizing, and discuss ways to move forward.
Attachment Trauma and Mentalization in Review
Lecturer
Prof. Victoria Stob, MA, LCSW, Victoria Stob is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Social Work in the Yale Child Study Center. She specializes in integrating social science-based research and theory into practicable clinical applications for high-risk children and families living in multi-generational adversity.