Miriam Steele Legacy Interview

Event Highlights

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 thinking 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 discusses 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.

She 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.”

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

Miriam 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?”

Key Themes Explored:

Reflective Functioning

• How the concept emerged from the London-Child Project research
• The predictive power of parental reflective functioning for infant attachment security
• The relationship between reflective functioning and mentalization-based treatments

Attachment Research and Clinical Applications

• The influence of John Bowlby and Mary Main on Miriam’s work
• How the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) transformed understanding of intergenerational patterns
• Practical applications of attachment research in clinical settings

Adoption and Foster Care

• Research findings on attachment representations and adoption outcomes
• Understanding the characteristics of successful adoptive parents
• Evidence for positive change in previously maltreated children

Community-Based Interventions

• The development and implementation of Group Attachment Based Intervention (GABI) in the Bronx
• Using video as a clinical tool to enhance parent-child interactions
• How group settings can support vulnerable families

Diversity and Cultural Considerations

• Critical reflections on the cultural context of attachment research
• The importance of addressing Eurocentric perspectives in the field
• Efforts to make attachment concepts applicable across diverse communities

Special Guest Contributions

Tessa Baradon shares insights from her long collaboration with Miriam at the Anna Freud Centre, discussing how Miriam’s work has profoundly influenced parent-infant psychotherapy. She reflects on their joint paper about the clinical use of the Adult Attachment Interview in parent-infant work and describes how Miriam’s persuasive advocacy for research-based approaches has enhanced clinical practice.

Jenny Kenrick discusses her work with Miriam in the field of adoption and fostering, highlighting how their collaboration transcended traditional institutional boundaries between the Tavistock Clinic and Anna Freud Centre. She explains how Miriam’s research has provided crucial evidence for understanding the needs of children who have experienced trauma leading to care placements, emphasising the importance of supporting parents with unresolved trauma.

Wendy Olesker reflects on her longitudinal research with the Margaret Mahler projects, following children from nursery to adulthood, and discusses the parallels with Miriam’s work. She explores how psychoanalytic understanding of development has been enriched by Miriam’s attachment research, creating a more integrated approach to understanding children’s internal worlds.

Adrienne Harris discusses her shared journey with Miriam from developmental psychology to psychoanalytic practice. She explores how their work together at the New School has fostered important conversations between different theoretical traditions and reflects on how Miriam’s commitment to empirical research has strengthened psychoanalytic approaches to understanding development.

Miriam Steele’s Biography

Professor Miriam Steele is a pioneering figure in attachment research, reflective functioning, and child development. As Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research, she co-directs the Center for Attachment Research with her husband, Howard Steele. Her transformative work has shaped modern mentalization-based treatments and influenced clinical practices across the globe. From her groundbreaking research in adoption and foster care to her innovative Group Attachment Based Intervention (GABI) in the Bronx, Miriam’s contributions have redefined how we understand and support vulnerable children and families.

Her work represents an important bridge between psychoanalytic thinking and empirical research, constantly testing and refining theoretical concepts through careful observation and measurement. Her collaborative research with Howard Steele has resulted in numerous influential papers and books that have shaped the field of developmental psychology and child mental health.

Special Guests’ Biographies

Tessa Baradon

Child Psychotherapist and former Director of the Parent-Infant Project at the Anna Freud Centre. Tessa has worked in various clinical settings, helping parents and infants navigate emotional difficulties. She has collaborated closely with Miriam Steele to integrate attachment concepts into parent-infant psychotherapy.

Jenny Kenrick

Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and expert on adoption and fostering. Jenny has worked extensively with children in transition within foster care and adoption contexts, providing crucial clinical insights that complement Miriam Steele’s research.

Adrienne Harris

Psychoanalyst and Developmental Psychologist, Faculty at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Adrienne combines her early training in developmental psychology with a psychoanalytic approach, creating innovative insights into child development.

Wendy Olesker

Training & Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and Faculty at NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Wendy’s research on child development, particularly through longitudinal studies, aligns closely with Miriam’s work on attachment theory.

Interviewer

Miriam was in conversation with Jane O’Rourke and Salam Soliman.

Jane O'Rourke – Founder of MINDinMIND and former award-winning BBC journalist turned Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist. Jane brings a unique skill set to create rich and thoughtful conversations, weaving together the personal and professional threads of her guests' journeys.

Salam Soliman – Director of the Center for Prevention and Early Trauma Treatment at Child First, Board Member of APA Division 39, and a Board Member of MINDinMIND.

Details correct as of 27 February 2025

Bibliography & Resources

Select Publications 

Books:

• Steele, M. and Steele, H. (eds.) (2008) Clinical Applications of the Adult Attachment Interview. New York: Guilford Press.
• Steele, H. and Steele, M. (eds.) (2017) Handbook of Attachment-Based Interventions. New York: Guilford Press.

Papers:

• Steele, M., Steele, H., & Fonagy, P. (1996) ‘Associations among attachment classifications of mothers, fathers, and their infants’, Child Development, 67(2), pp. 541–555.
• Steele, M., Hodges, J., Kaniuk, J., Hillman, S., and Henderson, K. (2003) ‘Attachment Representations and Adoption: Associations between Maternal States of Mind and Emotion Narratives in Previously Maltreated Children’, Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 29(2), pp. 187–205.