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Introduction
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January 2012 - present
November 2011 - present
January 2011 - present
Publications
Publications (169)
Mentalizing, in particular the successful attribution of complex mental states to others, is crucial for navigating social interactions. This ability is highly influenced by external factors within one's daily life, such as stress. We investigated the impact of stress on the brain basis of mentalization in adults. Using a novel modification of the...
The lack of affective responsiveness to others’ mental states – one of the hallmarks of psychopathy – is thought to give rise to increased interpersonal aggression. Recent models of psychopathy highlight deficits in attachment security that may, in turn, impede the development of relating to others in terms of mental states (mentalization). Here, w...
Anxiety disorders represent a common but often debilitating form of psychopathology in both children and adults. While there is a growing understanding of the etiology and maintenance of these disorders across various research domains, only recently have integrative accounts been proposed. While classical attachment history has been a traditional c...
Since the introduction of the dimensional assessment of personality functioning (PF) in DSM-5 and ICD-11, impairments in PF have consistently been related to transdiagnostic risk-factors for mental health. However, ecological momentary assessment investigating PF in relation to affect event dynamics and other psychopathology is scarce. Leveraging e...
Background
Complex post‐traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a severely disabling mental health condition, frequently observed in survivors of prolonged, repeated or multiple traumatic stressors. While studies indicate that engaging in psychotherapy can reduce CPTSD symptom severity, data on long‐term effectiveness of interventions is scarce. The a...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Background: Mentalizing is linked to mental health development and psychosocial functioning. Identifying and understanding the factors that may be associated with ineffective mentalizing is crucial for creating targeted psychosocial or psychotherapeutic interventions. Objective: This exploratory study assesses whether experiences of childhood maltr...
Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been identified as a major risk factor for physical and mental ill health in adulthood. So far, no studies have investigated whether ACEs during sensitive periods in infant development are associated with a higher likelihood of chronic pain (CP) in adulthood. Methods: Patients of the University...
Mentalization-promoting training for educational staff is considered promising for pedagogical work in schools. Mentalizing ability—the capacity to recognize and interpret one’s own and others’ mental states—is conceptualized as a key prerequisite for this work.
The training program “Curriculum Mentalization Training” by the MentEd network aims to...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Introduction
Parental Reflective Functioning describes the parents’ ability to view their child as motivated by mental states. The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) represents an 18-item and three-factor self-report measure. Our goal was to conduct the first German validation study.
Method
In a community sample of 378 mothers of...
Im Beitrag präzisieren Mitglieder des MentEd-Netzwerkes zunächst ihr Begriffsverständnis von Mentalisieren. Von dieser Grundlage aus wird begründet, wozu die Mentalisierungsfähigkeit in pädagogischen Kontexten notwendig und hilfreich ist. Dabei werden unterschiedliche Facetten des pädagogischen Alltags(-erlebens) angesprochen und erläutert, wie Men...
Ziele des Projektes sind I. die Schließung von Forschungslücken hinsichtlich der
Arbeit an Spitalschulen und einer Pädagogik bei Krankheit (PbK), II. die Vernetzung und der Austausch zu wissenschaftlichen und praktischen Erkenntnissen und III. die Zusammenführung der Erkenntnisse hin zur Entwicklung und Etablierung einer Aus- und Weiterbildung für...
Im Sinne inklusiver Bildung benötigen Lehrpersonen aller Schularten zusätzliche pädagogisch-didaktische Kompetenzen in der Heterogenitätsdimension Krankheit.
Um insbesondere diejenigen Lehrpersonen die in Transitionen, mit chronisch kranken Kindern und Jugendlichen und an Heilstättenschulen arbeiten, zu professionalisieren ist das Hauptziel des von...
Trauma-Focused mentalization-based treatment (MBT-TF) is an adaptation of mentalization-based treatment (MBT) specifically developed for patients suffering from attachment or complex trauma, with the possibility of co-occurring borderline personality pathology. The creation of MBT-TF was driven by previous research and observations that interventio...
The transition from university education to daily work at school is recognised as a significant challenge for teachers and special education teachers, termed 'reality shock'. This study investigates the role of mentalising-the capacity to perceive and interpret behaviour based on intentional mental states-and teaching-related self-efficacy as poten...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Generalising information from ourselves to others, and others to ourselves allows for both a dependable source of navigation and adaptability in interpersonal exchange. Disturbances to social development in sensitive periods can cause enduring and distressing damage to lasting healthy relationships. However, identifying the mechanisms of healthy ex...
Auf Basis der Herbsttagung der Kommission Psychoanalytische Pädagogik in der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaften (DGfE) planen wir zur Publikation im Oktober 2025 einen Sammelband im Verlag Barbara Budrich.
Der Sammelband ist in vier Themenbereiche strukturiert: I) Psychoanalytische Pädagogik in Schule, Unterricht und Lehrer:innenbi...
In terms of inclusive education, teachers of all school types need additional pedagogical-didactic competences in the heterogeneity dimension of illness. The main aim of the Movetia-funded project is to develop a curriculum for a MAS (Master of Advanced Studies) in Pedagogy in Illness and Hospital School Pedagogy in order to professionalise teacher...
The diagnosis of a serious illness in children and adolescents not only poses great challenges for the patients and their parents, but is also an important issue for schools and educators. Serious and long-term illnesses represent developmental tasks for pupils that deviate from their usual life routine, which - if not successfully overcome - can b...
Mentalization, understood as a human ability, plays a decisive role in the regulation of impulses and emotions, the promotion of the ability to reflect and social learning (Kirsch et al., 2024). This ability develops from childhood onwards through relationship experiences over the entire lifespan. An understanding of psychological processes arises...
The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) arranges phenotypes of mental disorders based on empirical covariation, ranging from narrowly defined symptoms to higher-order spectra of psychopathology. Since the introduction of personality functioning (PF) in DSM-5 and ICD-11, several studies have identified PF as a predictor of transdiagnost...
Drawing on the literature on person-culture fit, we investigated how culture (assessed as national-level familism), personality (tapped by attachment styles) and their interactions predicted social network characteristics in 21 nations/areas (N = 2977). Multilevel mixed modeling showed that familism predicted smaller network size but greater densit...
Background
Experiences of childhood maltreatment have been shown to be a crucial predictor of depressive symptoms.
Objective
This study investigated the association between a history of maltreatment and depressive symptoms in a mixed sample of adults, exploring whether feelings of shame and impairments in mentalizing mediate this association and p...
Background: In recent years, mentalizing – the capacity to understand one’s own and others’ intentional mental states in social contexts – has been considered to be a protective capacity that enables adaptive processing of stress-related emotional arousal, benefits general well-being and underpins adaptive emotion regulation. Objective: Several stu...
Background: Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a severely debilitating recently added symptom cluster in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). So far, only limited information on mental health treatment-uptake and -satisfaction of individuals with CPTSD is available. The aim of this study is to investigate these aspe...
This continuing medical education (CME) article centres on the concept of epistemic trust. It describes a presumably enduring but not fixed, developmental achievement of having basic trust in a person as a secure source of information that is rooted in early secure relationship experiences. The concept of epistemic trust is therefore also seen as t...
Background: Ample studies have focused on the negative consequences of COVID-19 on mental well-being, but fewer have explored the specific role of childhood abuse and neglect in the context of risk and resilience during this unprecedented crisis. Objective: We aimed to identify distinct profiles of individuals based on their experiences of childhoo...
ABSTRACT
Background: Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) describes chronic disturbances in self-organization (i.e. affect dysregulation; negative self-concept; severe difficulties in relationships) which are frequently observed in survivors of prolonged, repeated or multiple traumatic stressors. So far, evidence of psychodynamic treatmen...
Objective: This study examines whether resilience and mentalizing capacities affect the network constellation of various protective and risk factors among psychotherapists during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: A multinational sample of N = 536 psychotherapists completed surveys regarding their mentalizing capacity, general resilience, and therapist...
The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) arranges phenotypes of mental disorders based on empirical covariation, ranging from narrowly defined symptoms to higher-order spectra of psychopathology. Since the introduction of personality functioning (PF) in DSM-5 and ICD-11, several studies have identified PF as a transdiagnostic predictor...
Bayesian decision theory suggests that optimal decision-making should use and weigh prior beliefs with current information, according to their relative uncertainties. However, some characteristics of borderline personality disorder (BPD) patients, such as fast, drastic changes in the overall perception of themselves and others, suggest they may be...
Projektinformation zu einem laufenden Forschungsprojekt: Pb_KuS Pädagogik bei Krankheit und Spitalschulpädagogik (Movetia). Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Heilpädagogik, Jg. 30, 01/2024, S. 58. Movetia-Projektnummer: Pb-KuS; Projektnr.: 2023-1-CH01-IP-0055
Previous research shows that the propensity to endorse conspiracy theories is associated with disrupted forms of epistemic trust, i.e., the appropriate openness towards interpersonally communicated information. There are associations, first, with an increased mistrust in several actors and institutions responsible for the communication of informati...
Knowledge about critical success factors underpinning beneficial treatment outcomes in psychosomatic inpatient rehabilitation is scarce. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of patients’ epistemic stance in relation to the improvement of psychological distress during rehabilitation. In this naturalistic longitudinal observational stu...
Objectives
Treatments for borderline personality disorder (BPD) and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are less effective for patients with co‐occurring symptoms of both disorders, who are considered to have complex PTSD (cPTSD), compared with patients with either condition alone. Evidence suggests that co‐occurrence of symptoms indicates greate...
Introduction
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected wellbeing of at-risk groups, most research on resilience employed convenience samples. We investigated psychosocial resilience and risk factors (RFs) for the wellbeing of psychotherapists and other mental health practitioners, an under-researched population that provides essential su...
Sensitivity in parent-child interaction is essential for child development. Since fathers are increasingly involved in childrearing, identifying factors leading to paternal sensitivity is crucial. We examined the relation between attachment representation and reflective functioning (RF) as factors influencing paternal sensitivity in a longitudinal...
Symposium Group-centered research and theory for improving teaching and school climate
Building on the notion of epistemic trust as facilitating social learning, in this article we clarify how interventions from mentalization-based treatment (MBT) for borderline personality disorder generate this process. We suggest first that being mentalized is a critical cue in interactions to establish epistemic trust and second that epistemic mi...
People often form polarized beliefs, imbuing objects (e.g., themselves or others) with unambiguously positive or negative qualities. In clinical settings, this is referred to as dichotomous thinking or “splitting” and is a feature of several psychiatric disorders. Here, we introduce a Bayesian model of splitting that parameterizes a tendency to rig...
Objective
Considering the fact that the teaching profession is a highly stressful occupation and that teachers’ ineffective coping strategies contribute to higher levels of stress, the objective of the present study was to investigate whether insecure attachment is related to global stress experiences in preservice student teachers. Furthermore, it...
Epistemisches Vertrauen in der Pädagogik für Verhaltensstörungen
Essstörungen: Ausdruck verlorenen Grundvertrauens
Vertrauensvoll durch den (Schul-)Tag?
Vertrauen im Jugendstrafvollzug
Vertrauen und Verletzlichkeit
Vertrauen - Selbstvertrauen - Gottvertrauen
BACKGROUND
Although the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic has severely affected wellbeing of at-risk groups, most research on resilience employed convenience samples.
OBJECTIVE
We investigated psychosocial resilience and risk factors (RFs) for the wellbeing of psychotherapists and other mental health practitioners, an under-researched population that provides e...
Der Beitrag beschreibt das Mentalisieren als entwicklungsorientiertes Konzept für die
Lehrpersonenbildung. Das Konzept setzt an der Haltung und Entwicklung der Lehrpersonen
an und verändert die heilpädagogischen Prinzipien Beziehungsgestaltung und Strukturierung
nicht nur, sondern erweitert diese um ein drittes Moment: die Mentalisierung. Lehrpe...
Background
Inpatient psychosomatic rehabilitation is a key treatment for patients with mental health issues. However, knowledge about critical success factors for beneficial treatment outcomes is scarce. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of mentalizing and epistemic trust with the improvement of psychological distress during reh...
Based on the psychological stress caused by theCovid 19 pandemic in families, this article explores the fundamental question of how the psychological process of mentalizing - metaphorically speaking - can act as a psychosocial vaccination in stressful times. To this end, we look at the developments in the psychosocial context under the conditions o...
Deficits in mentalization are indicated by impaired emotional awareness and self-reflectiveness, and are associated with various mental disorders. However, there is a lack of validated research instruments. In this study, the psychometric properties of the Mentalization Questionnaire (MZQ) were evaluated in a representative German population sample...
Die pandemiebedingten Veränderungen nehmen Einfluss auf das Verhältnis von Nähe und Distanz als Spannungsfeld pädagogischer Professionalität und verlangen unterschiedliche inter- und intrapsychische Anpassungsleistungen. Mentalisierungsprozesse können hier als psychosoziale „Impfung“ helfen, Emotionen zu regulieren, soziales Lernen zu fördern und e...
Beschreibung des Movetia-Forschungsprojekts "MentEd.ch - Bringing mentalisation-based education to Switzerland" (Movetia-Projektnr.: 022-1-CH01-IP-0046)
Peer abuse (PA) is a widespread and gender-sensitive form of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). However, research on its influence on physical and mental health in adulthood remains scarce. The aim of this study was to investigate gender-specific associations between PA and physical and mental health in adulthood in a sample of general hospital...
A current direction of personality disorder research strives to identify key behavioural, cognitive, and ultimately computational facets of patient functioning via the use of engaging social paradigms. Thus far, few such paradigms have been put forward. Here, we introduce a novel task in which subjects interact with previously unknown virtual partn...
The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) organizes phenotypes of mental disorder based on empirical covariation, offering a comprehensive organizational framework from narrow symptoms to broader patterns of psychopathology. We argue that established self‐report measures of psychopathology from the pre‐HiTOP era should be systematically...
Eine Reise durch das Freud’sche Universum in 365 ausgewählten Zitaten. Über 280 renommierte Vertreter:innen der internationalen Psychoanalyse und bekannte Persönlichkeiten aus Literatur, Philosophie und Kultur nehmen Sie an die Hand und eröffnen Ihnen erhellende, überraschende und mitunter sehr persönliche Einblicke in Freuds Werk und Biografie. Ei...
Der Beitrag bietet eine Übersicht und Einführung in die Konzeption des Movetia-Forschungsprojekts MentEd.ch.
MentEd.ch setzt sich zum Ziel, die Mentalisierungsbasierte Pädagogik in der Schweizer Heilpädagogik zu adaptieren. Dies geschieht auf hochschulischer Ebene durch die curriculare Verankerung an der HfH mit Unterstützung durch ein internation...
Der Beitrag beschreibt auf Basis erhöhter Belastungen und von Stresserleben bei Lehrpersonen das Mentalisierungskonzept als protektive und förderbare Ressource zur Bewältigung der pädagogischen Alltagspraxis. Empirische Befunde zur protektiven Funktion der Mentalisierungsfähigkeit werden in Hinblick auf ihre praktischen Implikationen für die Aus- u...
The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) organizes phenotypes of mental disorder based on empirical covariation, offering a comprehensive organizational framework from narrow symptoms to broader patterns of psychopathology. We argue that established self-report measures of psychopathology from the pre-HiTOP era should be systematically...
Background
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with posttraumatic and complex posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in adulthood (PTSD/cPTSD), as well as reduced epistemic trust (trust in the authenticity and personal relevance of interpersonally transmitted information) and impaired personality functioning. The present work aims t...
Children’s cognitive and language development is a central aspect of human development and has wide and long-standing impact. The parent-infant relationship is the chief arena for the infant to learn about the world. Studies reveal associations between quality of parental care and children’s cognitive and language development when the former is mea...
Personality functioning and psychopathology are interrelated, yet clinically they are demarcated. Diagnostically, we can distinguish between affective disorders and personality disorders, but there is overlap between features, and the interrelationship between these features may be important in the consideration of treatment approaches. Taking an i...
Objective
The mentalizing concept is becoming increasingly popular in the clinical field and is associated with different mental health outcomes. According to mentalizing theory, the level of mentalizing depends on early sensitive relationships. Characteristics such as gender, age or cognitive competencies are considered to be of little importance....
Background
Although the relationship between childhood maltreatment, self-harm and suicidality is well-established, less is known about the mediating mechanisms explaining it. Based on a developmental mentalisation-based theoretical framework, childhood adversity compromises mentalising ability and attachment security, which in turn increase vulner...
Existing research presents a working understanding of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) patients’ symptomatology, traits, and behavior in everyday life, but how they combine and utilize prior and likelihood (current sensory) information when making decisions remains unclear. Bayesian Decision Theory suggests that optimal decision-making behavio...
Dissociation is a clinical phenomenon wherein the normal continuity between aspects of consciousness and experience is disrupted. Pathological dissociative symptoms are present in a number of psychiatric disorders, yet the brain bases of dissociation have primarily been examined within single disorders and findings do not converge across study samp...
Zusammenfassung
Hintergrund
Der Konfiguration selbstregulativer Fähigkeiten wird eine zentrale Rolle im Zustandekommen von Stress- und Belastungserleben zugewiesen, wobei dysfunktionale Anordnungen selbstregulativer Fähigkeiten charakteristisch für hohes Stresserleben sind. Mentalisieren – definiert als die Fähigkeit, Verhaltensweisen auf Basis me...
Zusammenfassung. Misshandlungserfahrungen in Kindheit und Jugend sind ein umfassendes und weitverbreitetes Problem, das mit massivem Leidensdruck der Betroffenen einhergeht und gravierenden Einfluss auf deren psychosoziale Entwicklung verübt. Mentalisieren – die Fähigkeit, Verhalten auf Basis intentionaler mentaler Zustände wahrnehmen zu können – w...
COVID‐19 has triggered a shift towards remote delivery of therapy and, despite a number of benefits, it risks discriminating against young people already marginalised due to adverse early life experiences, poverty or ethnicity. This editorial perspective considers challenges for remote therapy, focusing on: the financial burden of telehealth; the n...
Attachment and mentalizing are central concepts in research on the etiology, course, and treatment of depression. The goal of this cross-sectional study was to clarify the unique value of these constructs in characterizing the presence, severity, and chronicity of depression. We examined 50 female inpatients suffering from Major Depressive Disorder...
Mentalization theory is concerned with the capacity to notice, and make sense of, thoughts and feelings in self and others. This development may be healthy or impaired and therefore, by extension, it may be theorized that expertise in mentalizing can exist. Furthermore, a continuum from impairment to expertise should exist within separate dimension...
Zunächst wird Mentalisieren als wichtiges Merkmal der menschlichen emotionalen und sozialen Entwicklung kurz umrissen. Es wird darauf aufbauend versucht, das Entwicklungsmodell des Mentalisierens in seiner Bedeutung für die (Sonder)Pädagogik herauszuarbeiten. Darin wird Epistemisches Vertrauen als konzeptionelle Erweiterung des Mentalisierungskonze...
Background
Functional connectivity measures have garnered interest as possible biomarkers of psychiatric disorders including borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, small sample sizes and lack of within-study replications have led to divergent findings with no clear spatial foci. Therefore, we adopted an exploratory full-brain approach in t...
People often form polarized beliefs about others. In a clinical setting this is referred to as a dichotomous or ‘split’ representation of others, whereby others are not imbued with possessing mixtures of opposing properties. Here, we formalise these accounts as an oversimplified categorical model of others’ internal, intentional, states. We show ho...
Negative interpersonal experiences are a key contributor to psychiatric disorders. While previous research has shown that negative interpersonal experiences influence social cognition, less is known about the effects on participation in social interactions and the underlying neurobiology. To address this, we developed a new naturalistic version of...
Background
Mentalizing, the ability to understand the self and others as well as behaviour in terms of intentional mental states, is impaired in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Evidence for mentalizing deficits in other mental disorders, such as depression, is less robust and these links have never been explored while accounting for the effe...
Background
Emotional abuse in childhood has been linked to a higher expression of aggressive behavior in adulthood. The identification of protective factors that mitigate this association is needed. Mentalizing—the capacity to understand behavior in terms of intentional mental states—appears to be a promising candidate factor that possibly modifies...
