Attachment, Reflective Functioning and the Developing Self

This Legacy Interview offers a rare opportunity to learn from one of the world’s leading researchers and thinkers in child mental health. For over three decades, Professor Miriam Steele has been at the forefront of attachment research, developing groundbreaking concepts and methodologies that have transformed our understanding of parent-child relationships and developmental trajectories.

The conversation explores Miriam’s journey from her early PhD studies at the Anna Freud Centre to her current role as Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Psychology at The New School for Social Research in New York, where she co-directs the Center for Attachment Research with her husband, Howard Steele.

Of particular significance is Miriam’s development of the concept of parental reflective functioning—a parent’s capacity to understand their children’s emotions as well as their own. This concept, which emerged from her early research, was groundbreaking and has significantly influenced child psychotherapy models and underpins modern mentalization-based treatments. She says,  “Even individuals who faced tremendous adversity in their childhoods, who had this capacity to reflect on their experiences in childhood and earn their security, did not then pass along their insecurity.”

The interview explores with Miriam how reflective functioning became a central theme in her work and why it has proven so crucial in understanding children’s attachment patterns and developmental outcomes.

Miriam shares insights from her extensive research in adoption and foster care, offering evidence-based hope for severely maltreated children, and discusses the policy and treatment implications of her findings. She says, “There is no more powerful intervention we have access to, than adoption, than letting a child know this is your permanent family.”/i>

Miriam discusses her innovative Group Attachment Based Intervention (GABI) for vulnerable families in the Bronx, demonstrating how psychodynamic practice can be effectively integrated into community settings.

She also calls us to action, saying “We know enough. We don’t need any more research on the importance of attachment for children. That’s been well demonstrated. Why aren’t we doing anything about it?”

We were delighted to have welcomed Professor Miriam Steele to launch the MINDinMIND Lecture Series as she explored the intricate relationship between attachment, trauma and body image. Drawing on her pioneering research at the New School’s Center for Attachment Research, Miriam introduced the innovative ‘Mirror Interview’ (Kernberg, Normandin, & Buhl-Nielsen, 2006) – a unique assessment that examines the quality of self development and body representations including body esteem, reflective functioning, coherence and verbal and non-verbal expressions of affect – providing a window particularly into the internal world of adolescents and the earlier mother-child relationship.

Professor Miriam Steele discussed how the ‘Mirror Interview’ has been applied to explore the intergenerational transmission of body representations from mothers to daughters and in clinical work with adolescents with personality and eating disorders.

The presentation highlighted the clinical implications of body and attachment representations, offering valuable insights for practitioners working with body image concerns, attachment difficulties, and trauma.

We were particularly honoured to have welcomed Dr Bernadette Buhl-Nielsen as a special guest speaker, who co-developed the Mirror Interview technique and will provide insights into its clinical applications and latest developments.