The first part of the article gives a fine review about the importance of mentalization and affiliation for foster children and foster parents.
In the article, two intervention programs for foster parents are analyzed. The traditional program contains lessons about foster children’s special challenges, traumas and affiliation. This is compared to foster parents who receives an educational program that in addition contains lessons and built-in exercises about mentalization. It is established in the article, that s short-term psychoeducative program about mentalization actually has an effect on the mentalization ability. An interesting finding is that the foster parents who only received a normal psychoeducative program about trauma and affiliation achieved a poorer mentalization ability after the programme. A hypothesis about the cause of this, is that knowledge in fact can freeze one’s perspective.
Read the article here.