Mentalization, Affect Regulation, and Development of the Self

T he panel chair, Glen Gabbard, opened the two-day panel with some reflections on the place of mentalization theory in psychoanalytic discourse. Although in recent years we have had few new paradigms, mentalization theory appears to be a genuinely new model of psychoanalytic developmental and clinical theory. This model extends the clinical observations of object relations theory and calls to mind Fairbairn’s assertion that the libidinal motivation of the infant is primarily “object seeking.” Mentalization theory provides models both of early childhood psychological development and of psychotherapeutic practice. The fundamental therapeutic application of mentalization to psychodynamic technique lies in the observation that adult patients may experience corrective developmental experiences “when the patient finds himself in the eyes of the therapist.”