The association between therapists' attachment security and mentalizing capacity

Aims: The review examines the evidence that parents’ mentalizing predicts infant attachment security. \nMethod: Studies were included if they examined primary care-givers’ mentalizing, defined as the capacity to understand mental states underlying behaviour, and \ninfants’ attachment status. \nResults: Nine studies met criteria for review. Mentalizing was conceptualised and measured in different ways, including: reflective function (n = 1), maternal reflective \nfunction (n = 2), mind-mindedness (n = 5) and insightfulness (n = 1). \nConclusion: The studies suggest that care-givers’ attachment contributes to infants’ \nattachment security. The evidence is limited however by the small number of studies, \nsmall sample sizes and methodological and conceptual differences between studies. \nMoreover mentalizing alone appears unlikely to account fully for the \nintergenerational transmission of attachment.