Enhancing parental reflective functioning: A special tribute to the life and work of Nancy E. Suchman,PhD

Nancy E. Suchman's contributions to the fields of infant mental health, maternal reflective functioning, and attachment-based intervention will have long-lasting impacts. In particular, through the development and dissemination of her intervention program, Mothering from the Inside Out (MIO), she innovated a way of working with mothers with substance use disorders that represented a paradigm shift within the field of addiction. In this introduction to the special issue, written to honor her life and work, we review Nancy's background and briefly describe her academic accomplishments. The special issue contains nine qualitative and quantitative research reports written by Nancy's colleagues and their collaborators. All nine papers pertain to the theme of understanding, measuring, and promoting parents’ capacity for reflective functioning. Four provide findings that advance our understanding of parental reflective functioning. The other five highlight insights from continuing evaluations of MIO, including new adaptations of the model. To introduce the special issue, we provide an overview of the scope of the work done within these projects. Finally, the special issue concludes with two commentaries contributed by Linda Mayes and Arietta Slade, leading scholars within the field who were also Nancy's close colleagues. Both provide insight into Nancy's impact on the field.     

Safe haven in adolescence: Improving parental reflective functioning and youth attachment and mental health with the Connecting and Reflecting Experience

Attachment security provides a well-documented protective developmental function for children exposed to individual- and community-level trauma, yet the effectiveness of prevention and intervention efforts targeting attachment during adolescence has been relatively underexplored. The Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE) program is a transdiagnostic, bi-generational, group-based, mentalizing-focused parenting intervention developed to dismantle the intergenerational transmission of trauma and support secure attachment relationships across the developmental spectrum within an under-resourced community. This exploratory study evaluated outcomes among caregiver-adolescent dyads (N = 32) in the CARE condition of a nonrandomized clinical trial at an outpatient mental health clinic within a diverse, urban U.S. community with disproportionate trauma exposure exacerbated by COVID-19. Caregivers predominantly identified as Black/African/African American (47%), Hispanic/Latina (38%), and/or White (19%). At pre- and post-intervention, caregivers completed questionnaires regarding parental mentalizing and their adolescents’ psychosocial functioning. Adolescents completed scales regarding attachment and psychosocial functioning. Results showed a significant decrease in caregivers’ prementalizing on the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire, improvement in adolescent psychosocial functioning on the Youth Outcomes Questionnaire, and an increase in adolescents’ reports of attachment security on the Security Scale. These preliminary findings suggest that mentalizing-focused parenting interventions may be effective in fostering improved attachment security and psychosocial functioning during adolescence.     

Self-reported reflective functioning and father–child interactions in a sample of fathers who have used intimate partner violence

Reflective functioning (RF) has been found to be associated with mother–child interactions, but less is known about the association of fathers’ self and child-focused RF and father–child relationships.  Fathers who have histories of intimate partner violence (IPV) are known to have poor RF, which may impact their father–child interactions.  The current study was designed to examine how types of RF are associated with father–child relationships.  Pretreatment assessments and recorded, coded father–child play interactions were used to examine associations among fathers’ history of adverse childhood experiences (ACES), RF and coded father-child play interactions in a sample of 47 fathers with a history of IPV use in the last 6 months with their coparent.  Fathers’ ACES and their child's mental states (CM) were associated with father-child dyadic play interactions.  Fathers with greater ACES and higher scores on CM had the most dyadic tension and constriction during play interactions.  Those with high ACES but low CM had scores similar to those with low ACES and low CM.  These results indicate that fathers who have used IPV and have a history of significant adversity may benefit from interventions to increase their child-focused RF and further improve their interactions with their children.     

A fallacy of aristotle''s about ends

A distinction between activities and processes plays an important role in Aristotle's argument to establish that the good life is a life of activities, among which metaphysical contemplation is foremost. But, as a result of having failed to distinguish internal from external ends of action, Aristotle makes fallacious inferences from every activity's having an internal end in itself to its possessing features which may be legitimately inferred only from external ends, and from every process's having an internal end that is its terminal point to its having the attainment of that terminal point as an external end. The resulting confusion explains a number of problematic elements in Aristotle's ethical theory.     

Activation of bipolar prototypes in attribute inferences

The present study examined how prototypes, as organizational principles of knowledge about persons, affect attribute inference judgments. A distinction is drawn between bipolar and unipolar categories. Two questions are addressed: First, whether only one or both prototypes of bipolar categories like extraversion-introversion are activated in making inference judgments, and second, whether information about the applicability of a stimulus item to a target is processed differently than information about the inapplicability of the stimulus item. The results support the hypothesis that only one prototype is activated and that this is the affirmative one, irrespective of whether the stimulus information is applicable or inapplicable to the target person. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Lordship, Bondage, and the Formation of Homo Religiosus

After a brief exploration of Hegel's writing on the formation of self-consciousness, including the place of religiosity in this formation, the article examines Kojeve's response to a Hegelian homo religiosus, followed by a counter-response to Kojeve's atheism through a peculiar, Jaspersian reading of Erich Fromm's discussion of the x experience. Finally, it will be argued that the desire for mutual recognition, and humanity's yearning for transcendence, are essential experiences in the formation of self-consciousness.     

Mediation of the stigma in the influence of negative symptomatology over recovery in psychosis

Background/Objective: The interest in recovery processes in psychotic disorders has boosted the necessity of knowledge about the factors that could influence in such recovery. Negative symptomatology and the stigma have been negatively linked to the recovery process in psychosis. The aim of this investigation is to improve the understanding of how the recovery process is affected by negative symptomatology based on the analysis of the mediating effects of the internalized stigma. Method: The sample was composed of 114 people that had experienced, at some point in their life, at least one clinically relevant psychotic episode. CAPE-42, STORI and ISMI were used for the evaluation. The macro PROCESS for SPSS was used. The indirect effect was calculated using 10.000 samples of bootstrap for the bootstrap confidence intervals (IC) corrected for bias. Results: The results show that the influence of negative symptomatology predicts the stigmatization of the person regarding his disorder. This predicts a negative influence in the recovery process of the psychosis. Conclusions: These results back the importance of adding the reduction of the stigma as a specific strategy to improve the recovery process in psychotic disorders.