About this course
This course is designed for psychotherapists who would like to find out more about mentalization.
It explores the way we work with non-mentalising in depressed and anxious patients in order to restore our patients’ mentalising and reflective capacities. This will be achieved through the use of teaching, clinical illustrations, video clips, demonstrations and role plays.
Some knowledge of Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy is recommended: you may have completed the training and be a DIT practitioner or supervisor; you may be mid-way through the training or you may be working as a psychotherapist or psychologist who is familiar with this brief psychotherapy model.
The course will cover:
• Practical applications of mentalization based therapy techniques in brief psychodynamic work with depressed and anxious patients
• Recognising breaks in mentalization in this patient group
• Techniques for restoring mentalization in our patients and ourselves
• Mentalizing the transference and addressing breaches in the therapeutic alliance

- Who is this course suitable for?
Those psychotherapists, psychodynamic counsellors, mental health clinicians and other allied professionals who have some familiarity with the DIT model of brief psychotherapy and would like to find out more about mentalization.
- Aims of the course?
• To refresh and consolidate mentalization techniques in brief psychotherapy (using DIT as the framework)
• To consolidate the “not knowing”, curious stance that is characteristic of DIT and Mentalization approaches to therapy
• To recognise signs of non-mentalizing and how best to restore patients’ mentalising including where there is misattunement in the consulting room
- System requirements for online training
The online platform Zoom will be used to deliver this training. Prior to booking on, please ensure you meet the system requirements so you're able to join this training.
Before the training, please test your equipment is working by going to Zoom.us/test and follow the instructions.
Please note, Peter Fonagy teaches, on average for half-day on this training course rather than the full duration of the training. At times, due to unforeseen circumstances his teaching time is reduced. The training is led by other experienced trainers. Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families reserves the right to change speakers without notice.
The Anna Freud Centre brings together those with a stake in the mental health of children and young people. Please subscribe to our mailing list to receive a bi-monthly e-newsletter and occasional updates about the Centre's training and events.