Arietta Slade, PhD
Michelle Sleed, PhD
Ann Stacks, PhD
Kristyn Wong, PhD
Arietta Slade, PhD
Arietta Slade, Ph.D. is Clinical Professor at the Yale Child Study Center, and Professor Emerita in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York. She is an internationally recognized theoretician, clinician, researcher, and teacher, who has published widely on reflective parenting, the clinical implications of attachment theory, the relationship between parental reflective functioning and the relational contexts of early symbolization, and regularly presents her work to national and international audiences. For the past 16 years she has been co-directing Minding the Baby®, an interdisciplinary reflective parenting home visiting program for high-risk mothers, infants, and their families, at the Yale Child Study Center and School of Nursing. This program is one of only 18 certified “evidence-based” home visiting programs in the United States.
Dr. Slade is author, with Jeremy Holmes, of Attachment in Therapeutic Practice (SAGE Publications, 2017), and editor, with Jeremy Holmes, of the six volume set, Major Work on Attachment (SAGE Publications, 2013), with Elliot Jurist and Sharone Bergner, of Mind to Mind: Infant Research, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis (Other Press, 2008), and with Dennie Wolf, of Children at Play (Oxford University Press, 1994). She is a Contributing Author to Handbook of Attachment-Based Interventions, Handbook of Attachment, Handbook of Infant Mental Health, Handbook of Mentalization Based Treatment, Enhancing Early Attachments: Theory, Research, Intervention, and Policy, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.
Dr. Slade is particularly known for her work on how to define and assess parental reflective functioning (Slade, 2002, 2005). In 1985, she and Larry Aber developed The Parent Development Interview (PDI; Slade, Aber, Berger, Bresgi, & Kaplan, 1985; 2003), which is now commonly used to assess parental reflective functioning (Slade, Bernbach, Grienenberger, Levy, & Locker, 2003). She has trained over 200 people to score parental reflective functioning using the PDI or the Pregnancy Interview (Slade, Grunebaum, Huganir, & Reeves, 1987; Slade, 2002).
Michelle Sleed, Ph.D.
Michelle Sleed, PhD. is a senior research fellow and deputy director of the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy doctoral training programme at the Anna Freud Centre and University College London.
Dr. Sleed has been using the PDI and RF coding in her clinical research for the last two decades. Her research interests are in parental reflective functioning, caregiving representations, and parent-infant/child attachment relationships. She is particularly interested in evaluating how parental representations and mentalizing can be supported through interventions for families with complex difficulties.
Ann Stacks, PhD
Ann M. Stacks, Ph.D. is the Director of the Infant Mental Health Program at Wayne State University’s Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute. Dr. Stacks holds a full license in marriage and family therapy and is endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Mentor by the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.
Dr. Stacks’ program of research focuses on dimensions of caregiving that support social-emotional development in early childhood, especially in the context of family risk, including poverty and maltreatment. She is particularly interested in the protective role that caregiver reflective functioning and sensitivity play in supporting the development of a secure attachment and social-emotional competence in young children and in understanding effective ways to promote caregiver reflective functioning and sensitivity in parents who have a history of childhood maltreatment and in early childhood teachers.