Mentalizing in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy explains how mentalization-based therapy (MBT) can be used within the framework of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapies.

Josef Brockmann, Holger Kirsch, and Svenja Taubner explain the outstanding importance of mentalizing for contemporary psychoanalysis and assess the essential conceptual innovations of mentalizing, focusing on outpatient individual therapies for patients with personality disorders. The book demonstrates the high connectivity of mentalizing to psychoanalysis and considers the further development of the concept of mentalizing. A practical and research-oriented work, the book documents numerous case studies, and detailed transcripts of treatment dialogs supplemented by extensive commentary to illustrate the practical application of mentalizing.

Mentalizing in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice who are looking to integrate mentalizing into their work.

“For the sake of the mentalization family as a whole, but far more for my own, I would like to thank these remarkable authors for the most comprehensive account to date that allows us to think together mentalization theory as it has developed and its original frame of reference within the psychoanalytic corpus. Not only is this a unique book, it is also a highly creative contribution to the literature that I urgently hope will draw many more initiatives and thus bring psychoanalysis back into fruitful conversation with mentalization theory. It is late, but by no means too late.” – From the Foreword of Peter Fonagy, OBE, FMedSci, FBA, FAcSS, Head, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, United Kingdom; Chief Executive, Anna Freud Centre. He is regarded as one of the world's leading figures in psychotherapy research.

Josef Brockmann is a psychoanalyst and training analyst based in Frankfurt, Germany. He received advanced training in MBT with Bateman and Fonagy and has been an accredited MBT Practitioner at the Anna Freud Institute in London. He has accumulated many years of experience in psychotherapy research.

Holger Kirsch is a specialist in psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and social medicine as well as a teaching analyst (DGPT/DGIP). He is a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt (EHD) and has his own private practice.

Svenja Taubner is a psychoanalyst, supervisor, and MBT trainer (Anna Freud Center). She is Director of the Institute for Psychosocial Prevention at the University Hospital of Heidelberg University, full professor for psychosocial prevention, and the president of the MBT association for German-speaking countries (MBT-D-A-CH).