In-session reflective functioning in psychotherapies for borderline personality disorder: The emotion regulatory role of reflective functioning.

Abstract

The capacity for understanding mental states (reflective functioning; RF) is considered essential for self-growth, social learning, and emotion regulation. Impaired RF is thought to play a central role in borderline personality disorder (BPD). We examined whether asking patients to consider mental states in-session has a down-regulatory effect on emotional arousal in treatments for BPD. Early-, middle- and late-phase videotaped sessions from a randomized-controlled trial of transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP; n = 30), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT; n = 29), and supportive psychodynamic therapy (SPT; n = 29) were segmented to therapist and patient talk-turns. Therapist talk-turns were rated as asking patients to consider mental state (bids for RF) or not. Patient talk-turns were rated for RF and acoustically encoded for arousal. Bids were twice as common in TFP compared to DBT and SPT. Across treatments, therapist bids for RF predicted better RF, which, in turn, predicted lower emotional arousal. Asking patients to consider mental states has a down-regulatory effect on patients' arousal in psychotherapies for BPD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).