Affect Regulation and Mentalization

This article highlights the importance and effect of affect regulation on the development of thinking. Psychoanalysts suppose the new-born to be overflood by feeling, to say affects and emotions. At the beginning the baby is not only bodily but also psychically helpless. As the baby needs a specially prepared milk it needs a specially adapted emotional food. But how does this emotional food of affect regulation looks like? The mother takes in affects of the baby and modulates the affects. She will mirror this subtly changed to her baby. This leads to a soothing and satisfaction of the baby. By these constant repetitions it learns more and more about him and internalises this experience in him. The mechanism of internalisation is explained in this paper. Also different possibility of the development of the self are touched. Depending on the experiences in childhood of affect regulation clinical pictures are described.