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About the author
Marianne Verfaille started her career working with children with attachment problems. For the past twenty years she has been senior art therapist at De Wende, a psychotherapeutic day treatment centre for people with personality disorders in Eindhoven, in the southern Netherlands. She has been a driving force behind the movement to integrate mentalizing into arts therapies since 2004. Marianne developed the professional course on mentalizing in arts therapies which ultimately led to her book, 'Mentalizing in Arts Therapies'. She also has her own practice, "Marianne Verf", offering further training and refresher courses for arts therapists. She lectures at RINO, the Regional Institute for Further Training in Amsterdam and is a registered supervisor and registered MBT-specialised therapist. Marianne has a number of publications to her name.
Summary
This book describes the use of therapeutic art, music, and dance interventions against a background of mentalization, thus forging a link between arts therapies and mentalization-based treatment. This book has its roots in the theory of Mentalization Based Treatment by Antony Bateman and Peter Fonagy, and combines the broad experience of many art therapists with art, music and dance/movement therapy in psychiatric settings in the treatment of adults and adolescents both individually and in groups, as well as children with disorganised attachment. As a treatment concept, mentalization is quite straightforward because mentalizing is a typically human ability. As Bateman and Fonagy (2012) say: "Without mentalizing there can be no robust sense of self, no constructive social interaction, no mutuality in relationships, and no sense of personal security". On the other hand, it is not so simple to fully grasp the significance of mentalization. Mentalization-based therapy is a specific type of psychotherapy designed to help people reflect on their own thoughts and feelings and differentiate them from the perspectives of others.
