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Mentalize the Crocodile: On the Use of Educational Films in Mentalization Training with Teacher
What does mentalising have to do with crocodiles?
The European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2024 at the University of Cyprus was a special occasion for European and international exchange between educational researchers. Many thanks to the organisers EERA European Educational Research Association for the very successful implementation.
We are very grateful for the selection of our contribution ‘Mentalise the Crocodile: On the Use of Educational Films in Mentalisation Training with Teacher’ for ECER 2024 at the university. In Network 21 ‘Education and Psychoanalysis’, we were able to present our research findings on the topic of mentalisation. We focused on the professionalisation of teachers through mentalisation-based educational films. We presented the products of the international project Mented.ch (022-1-CH01-IP-0046) funded by Movetia - Exchange and Mobility.
Enclosed you will find the educational films on the topic of ‘Mentalising in education’ and also the film on the crocodile: https://mented.de/erasmus/videos
and the slides of the lecture
authors: Turner, Agnes, Link, Pierre-Carl, Langnickel, Robert, Nolte, Tobias, Gingelmaier, Stephan, Krisch, Holger
«Having Teachers in Mind» – Can school and teacher training be ‘Freud'-less?
From 13-14 September 2024, the autumn conference of the Commission on Psychoanalytic Pedagogy, part of the German Society for Educational Sciences, will take place at the HfH-Zurich, in cooperation with the Movetia project MentEd. ch - Bringing mentalisation-based education to Switzerland (022-1-CH01-IP-0046), the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Psychodynamischer Professorinnen und Professoren e. V. (AGPPP), the association MentEd - Internationales Netzwerk Soziales Lernen, Beziehung und Mentalisieren e.V. and the Gesellschaft für psychoanalytische Sozialpsychologie e. V. (GfpS).
Prof Peter Fonagy from University College London has been invited as a guest speaker.
Keynote: Peter Fonagy, London, United Kingdom
Keynote speech I: Patrick Bühler, Zurich, Switzerland
Keynote II: Agnes Turner, Klagenfurt, Austria
Keynote III: Marion Esser, Bonn, Germany
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Information on the autumn conferenceMentalizing in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy - Basics, Applications, Case Studies
1st Edition
Mentalizing in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Basics, Applications, Case Studies
By Josef Brockmann, Holger Kirsch, Svenja Taubner
publication date: September 30th,2025
Mentalizing in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy explains how mentalization-based therapy (MBT) can be used within the framework of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapies.
Josef Brockmann, Holger Kirsch, and Svenja Taubner explain the outstanding importance of mentalizing for contemporary psychoanalysis and assess the essential conceptual innovations of mentalizing, focusing on outpatient individual therapies for patients with personality disorders. The book demonstrates the high connectivity of mentalizing to psychoanalysis and considers the further development of the concept of mentalizing. A practical and research-oriented work, the book documents numerous case studies, and detailed transcripts of treatment dialogs supplemented by extensive commentary to illustrate the practical application of mentalizing.
Mentalizing in Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice who are looking to integrate mentalizing into their work.
Bringing Mentalization to Ankara/Turkiye (20.02.-25.02.2023)
It was actually planned as a study trip - Prof. Dr Holger Kirsch was to visit the University of Ankara in February with nine students from the Master's programme in Social Work.
Everything was planned down to the last detail when the terrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria became known. Like so many people, we were shocked and moved by the scale of the disaster. As a result, universities were closed across the country in Turkey and later everything was switched to online teaching except for the final semesters. The planned exchange with students and teachers seemed hardly possible - therefore our students decided with a heavy heart to cancel the planned excursion and not to accompany Prof. Dr. Kirsch.
The cooperation talks were initiated last year when Dr. Nesime Can from the Department of Educational Sciences at Ankara University, one of EHD's many partner universities, took part in the EHD International Week.
In order to be able to establish a research cooperation with the colleagues in Ankara, Prof. Dr. Kirsch travelled to Ankara alone. He met with interested representatives of the Department of Educational Sciences at Ankara University and was presented with a plaque of honour by the Vice-Dean (see 3rd photo). It was agreed to apply for a joint research project.
Prof. Dr. Holger Kirsch: "The content will be the question of whether the ability to mentalize is similarly or culturally different in intercultural comparisons; initial preliminary work on this has already been done. I hope that our joint research project will be supported by third-party funding and that Nesime Can and her colleagues will come to the EHD for the next meeting in autumn."
"Ich gseh öppis wo du nöd gsehsch" -I see something you do not see
"Mentalizing as an innovative approach to behavioural problems" - this was the title of the inaugural lecture by Pierre-Carl Link, Professor of Education in the field of socio-emotional and psychomotor development at the University of applied sciences for Special Needs in Zurich.
hfh.ch/antrittsvorlesung-pierre-carl-linkSoziales Lernen, Beziehung und Mentalisieren - social learning, relationship and mentalizing
Newly published in August 2022:
In this anthology, renowned experts discuss epistemological foundations and social applications of the mentalization approach, such as in anti-democratic attitudes, social learning, inclusion, group processes or mentalizing in organisations.
With contributions by Michael Tomasello, Peter Fonagy, Heidi Keller and many others.
Public relations
Multiplyer events
July 2022 - "A stupid morning" - Mentalizing and stress regulation in youth welfare and school. Symposium at the EHD - University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt
Juli 2022 A new mentalization-based curriculum to support teachers and those working in educational settings (online)
Peter Fonagy, Joost Hutsebaut, Stephan Gingelmaier and Tobias Nolte give an overview of the curriculum developed in partnership with University College London and the Anna Freud Centre
Downloads
29. Juni 2022 Symposium Mentaliseren in het onderwijs, Breda Nederland
June 2022 Mentalisierungsbasierte Pädagogik - Vortrag und Workshop. Paracelsus Medizinische Privatuniversität Salzburg
May 2022 - Ludwigsburg film premiere
After the professional film shoot could be completed in February 2021 despite the pandemic, it became clear that there had to be a worthy form of film premiere for these elaborately produced and very successful short films. Due to Corona, this could only be realised on 31 May 2022. However, with our cooperation partners from the Film Academy Ludwigsburg and Paradoksfilms, we were able to move into the Caligari cinema via 60 interested professionals - many of them in leading positions. The films and their benefits were discussed in detail with a top-class panel and the invited experts and leaders in a concentrated exchange.
This was then continued intensively into the evening at the premiere celebration with drinks and snacks.
War in Europe
Members of the network support aid transport for Ukraine
