Patrick Luyten Editor & Author

Patrick Luyten, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Leuven; Reader in the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London; and Visiting Professor at the Yale Child Study Center. His research focuses on the role of personality, stress, and interpersonal processes in depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia. He is also currently involved in studies on mentalization-based treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder. Dr. Luyten serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals and is a recipient of the Psychoanalytic Research Exceptional Contribution Award from the International Psychoanalytical Association. He also maintains a private practice.

Linda C. Mayes, MD, is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology in the Yale Child Study Center and Special Advisor to the Dean, Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Mayes’s research integrates perspectives from child development, behavioral neuroscience, psychophysiology and neurobiology, developmental psychopathology, and neurobehavioral teratology. Her work focuses on stress-response and regulatory mechanisms in young children at both biological and psychosocial risk. She also focuses on how adults transition to parenthood and the basic neural circuitry of early parent-infant attachment. She and her colleagues have developed a series of interventions for parents, including Minding the Baby, an intensive home-based program, and Discover Together, a program to enhance community and family resilience.

Peter Fonagy, OBE, FMedSci, FBA, FAcSS, is Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science and Director of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London (UCL), and is Chief Executive of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. Dr. Fonagy is Senior Clinical Advisor on Children’s Mental Health at NHS England, Director of the UCLPartners Integrated Mental Health and Behaviour Change Programme, Consultant to the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, and Visiting Professor at Yale and Harvard Medical Schools. His clinical interests center on early attachment relationships, social cognition, borderline personality disorder, and violence. A codeveloper of mentalization-based treatment, Dr. Fonagy has published more than 550 scientific papers, 250 chapters, and 20 books.

Mary Target, MSc, PhD, is Professor of Psychoanalysis in the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London; Clinical Professor at Yale Medical School; and Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna. She has held several leadership positions in psychology and psychoanalytic organizations. She has a half-time psychoanalytic practice, with clinical interests in early attachment relationships, personality disorders, and disturbances of adult attachment and social cognition. Dr. Target's research interests include child and adult attachment and mentalization, treatment outcomes in children and adolescents, and the development and evaluation of models of psychotherapy. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and 11 books in collaboration, many with Peter Fonagy.

Sidney J. Blatt, PhD, until his death in 2014, was Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at Yale University. Dr. Blatt published extensively in a wide range of journals in psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, and authored several books. He was a recipient of the Mary S. Sigourney Foundation Award for distinguished contributions to psychoanalysis, among other honors.