In a brilliant examination of the frontiers of human emotion and cognition, four prominent psychoanalysts combine the perspectives of developmental psychology, attachment theory and psychoanalytic technique. The result of this marriage of disciplines is a bold, energetic and ultimately encouraging vision for the psychoanalytic treatment.
Introduction -- Theoretical Perspectives -- Attachment and Reflective Function: Their Role in Self-Organization -- Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Affects and Affect Regulation -- The Behavior Geneticist's Challenge to a Psychosocial Model of the Development of Mentalization -- Developmental Perspectives -- The Social Biofeedback Theory of Affect-Mirroring: The Development of Emotional Self-Awareness and Self-Control in Infancy -- The Development of an Understanding of Self and Agency -- "Playing with Reality": Developmental Research and a Psychoanalytic Model for the Development of Subjectivity -- Marked Affect-Mirroring and the Development of Affect-Regulative Use of Pretend Play -- Developmental Issues in Normal Adolescence and Adolescent Breakdown -- Clinical Perspectives -- The Roots of Borderline Personality Disorder in Disorganized Attachment -- Psychic Reality in Borderline States -- Mentalized Affectivity in the Clinical Setting -- Epilogue
