Peter Fonagy

Peter Fonagy
Born	1952 Budapest, Hungary
Residence	London, England
Fields	Psychoanalysis, psychiatry
Institutions	Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Head of the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London, Chief Executive at the Anna Freud Centre in London, Consultant to the Child and Family Program at the Menninger Department of Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine.

Peter Fonagy OBE FMedSci (born 1952) is a Hungarian-born British psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He studied clinical psychology at University College London. He is Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and head of the department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London, Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre, a training and supervising analyst in the British Psycho-Analytical Society in child and adult analysis, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a registrant of the BPC. His clinical interests centre on issues of borderline psychopathology, violence and early attachment relationships. His work attempts to integrate empirical research with psychoanalytic theory. He has published numerous articles and has authored or edited 16 books.^[1]

Fonagy was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to psychoanalysis and clinical psychology.^[2]

Contemporary psychoanalysis

Fonagy received the Otto Weininger Memorial Award^[3] for his contributions to the development of contemporary psychoanalysis. To this regard he has helped to improve the dialogue between analysts and cognitive therapists. Fonagy has played and still plays a major role in the evaluation of psychotherapy research.^[4] The evaluation of his research is (mostly) based on the effectiveness of treatment. Evaluation of treatment has led to review, recommendations and implications of psychotherapy. Fonagy has offered detailed evidence for the efficacy of psychological interventions of mental disorders and for special populations, including treatment of borderline personality disorder.

Mentalization

In their award winning^[5] book Affect Regulation, Mentalisation and the Development of the Self, Fonagy and his colleagues put forth a detailed theory for the way in which the abilities to mentalise and to regulate affect can determine an individual's successful development. They define mentalisation as the ability to make and use mental representations of their own and other people's emotional states. The authors discuss the ways in which bad and insufficient parenting, leading to certain attachment styles,^[6] can leave children unable to modulate and interpret their own feelings, as well as the feelings of others.^[7] These inabilities to mentalise and regulate affect have implications for severe personality disorders, as well as general psychological problems of self-confidence, and sense of self.^[8]

Mentalization-based treatment

Fonagy is particularly interested in borderline personality disorder, which was for a long time assumed to be treatment-resistant.^[9] He and A. Bateman proposed in their book Psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder: mentalisation based treatment, a new way to treat BPD.^[10] Mentalization based treatment (MBT), rooted in attachment theory, is based on the idea that people with borderline personality disorder mainly lack the ability to mentalise, which is caused by an absence of contingent and marked mirroring during development. The primary goals of treatment are to improve mentalisation skills, making connections between the inner experience of relationships and the actual representation, learning how to work with current emotions and how to establish real relationships. In this way they could form a more coherent sense of self and develop new (secure) attachment styles.^[11][12]

Works

• Fonagy, P. (1996). "Attachment, the development of the self, and its pathology in personality disorders". Psychomedia: 26–32. 
• Fonagy, P. (2001). Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis. Other Press. 
• Fonagy, P.; Gergely, G.; Jurist, E.; Target, M. (2002). Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. Other Press. 
• Fonagy, P.; Target, M. (2003a). Psychoanalytic Theories: Perspectives from Developmental Psychopathology. Whurr Publications. 
• Bateman, A; Fonagy, P. (2003b). "The development of an attachment based treatment program for borderline personality disorder". Bulletin of the Menniger Clinic (76): 187–211. 
• Bateman, A; Fonagy, P. (2004a). "Mentalization based treatment of borderline personality disorder". Journal of personality disorders (18): 36–51. 
• Fonagy, P.; Bateman, A. (2004b). Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: Mentalization Based Treatment. Oxford University Press. 
• Fonagy, P.; Roth, A. (2004c). What Works For Whom? A Critical Review of Psychotherapy Research (2nd ed.). Guilford. 
• Fonagy, P.; Roth, A.; Higgitt, A. (2005). "Psychodynamic psychotherapies: Evidence–based practice and clinical wisdom". Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic (69,1): 1–58. 
• Fonagy, P.; Target, M (2006a). "The mentalisation-based approach to self pathology". Journal of personality disorders (20): 544–576. 
• Fonagy, P.; Bateman, A (2006b). "Mechanism of change in mentalisation based treatment of borderline personality disorder". Journal of clinical Psychology (62): 411–430. 

References