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Parental reflective functioning: an introduction.

Arietta Slade1

  • 1The City University of New York, Yale Child Study Center, 8 Hodge Road, Roxbury, CT 06783, USA.

Attachment & Human Development
|October 8, 2005
PubMed
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This study introduces parental reflective functioning, a parent's ability to understand their child's behavior through mental states. This concept is crucial for developmental theory and clinical practice.

Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Clinical Psychology

Background:

  • Reflective functioning (RF) is the capacity to understand behavior via mental states.
  • Introduced by Fonagy et al. in 1991, RF significantly impacts developmental theory and clinical practice.
  • Parental reflective functioning (PRF) extends RF to a parent's ability to mentalize their child.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Introduce and define parental reflective functioning (PRF).
  • Review Fonagy's foundational concepts of reflective functioning.
  • Examine the application of PRF to parental representations and the parent-child relationship.

Main Methods:

  • Literature review of reflective functioning.
  • Conceptual analysis of PRF in developmental and clinical contexts.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Description of a coding system for PRF.

    • Main Results:

    • PRF is defined as a parent's capacity to mentalize their child's internal states.
    • The applicability of PRF to parental representations is explored.
    • A coding system for PRF is presented as a framework for further research.

    Conclusions:

    • Parental reflective functioning is a vital construct for understanding parent-child dynamics.
    • The introduced coding system provides a framework for empirical investigation of PRF.
    • This work sets the stage for the special issue papers exploring PRF in depth.