Prax. Kinderpsychol. Kinderpsychiat. 63: 795 – 811 (2014), ISSN: 0032-7034 (print), 2196-8225 (online) © Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen 2014 Relexive Kompetenz der Mütter als Prädiktor des Therapieerfolgs mit Psychoanalytischer Kurzzeittherapie im Alter von 4 bis 10 Jahren 1 Tanja Müller-Göttken*, Lars O. White*, Kai von Klitzing und Annette M. Klein Summary Maternal Relective Functioning as a Predictor of herapeutic Success of Psychoanalytic Short- term herapy for Children Aged 4 to 10 Years Recent work implicates the capacity to mentalize as a predictor of therapeutic success of psy- chodynamically oriented psychotherapy for adults. However, little, if any, research focuses on similar associations in childhood. In the current study, we investigated the role of maternal relective functioning (RF) in the treatment of 25 children with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders and a high level of externalizing comorbidity in an outpatient setting. Before and af- ter treatment of their children with short-term Psychoanalytic Child herapy (PaCT), we as- sessed maternal RF using the Parent Development Interview and requested parents to report on symptoms of their 4-10-year-old children using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). RF proved highly stable and showed no signiicant change from pre- to post-treatment over an average treatment interval of 41 weeks. While remission in internalizing symptoms was unrelated to pretreatment maternal RF, children with high-RF mothers showed signiicant remission of externalizing comorbidity in comparison to children with low-RF mothers both immediately ater treatment as well as at six-month follow-up. hese preliminary results sup- port parental RF as a valuable prognostic criterion for successful treatment of externalizing symptoms with PaCT. hese indings call for replication in large-scale follow-up studies with children diagnosed with externalizing disorders. Prax. Kinderpsychol. Kinderpsychiat. 63/2014, 795-811 Keywords psychoanalytic child therapy – mentalization – maternal relective functioning – developmental psychopathology – externalizing behavior ORIGINALARBEITEN 1 Diese Studie wurde von der Heidehof Stitung GmbH gefördert. Die Autoren danken allen teil- nehmenden Eltern und Kindern. * geteilte Erstautorenschat