Long before we can name our emotions, the relationships we are born into are already shaping how we will feel them. That was the essence of a joint presentation by Peter Fonagy and Camilla Rosan at the Mpowering Minds Women's Mental Health Summit 2026—delivered online from London.
Dr Peter Fonagy
Fonagy is a professor of contemporary psychoanalysis and developmental science at the University College London. He served as chief executive of Anna Freud for over 20 years and is currently senior national clinical adviser for NHS England on children and young people's mental health. Fonagy is one of the world's foremost authorities on attachment theory and mentalisation. With over 700 scientific papers and 23 books to his name, his work has fundamentally shaped how clinicians and policymakers think about the relationship between early experience and lifelong mental health.
His session, titled 'Attachment as a Blueprint: How Early Bonds Shape Emotional Safety', explored how the quality of a child's earliest relationships—most often with the mother—functions as a kind of internal template. "At the heart of attachment is the idea that caregivers help children feel safe enough to explore the world. When children feel secure, they can learn, play, and grow, and when they are upset, they can return to their caregiver for comfort and reassurance," he said.
Central to Fonagy's framework is the concept of mentalisation—the capacity to understand one's own and others' behaviour in terms of underlying mental states: feelings, desires, intentions. This capacity, he has argued across decades of research, is developed through sensitive, attuned caregiving in early life. When that caregiving is disrupted—by trauma, mental illness, poverty, or isolation—the effects can be far-reaching.
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"Children build mental models of relationships from repeated experiences of whether caregivers are available as a haven and secure base," he explained. "These guide how children interpret other people and manage distress."
Rosan, course director, clinical psychology programme, King's College, London, focused on early relational processes that can shape attachment. "Attunement is shaped by family structure, hierarchy, and caregiving norms," she said. "Small shifts in parental curiosity can change the emotional climate; as practitioners, we can intervene in micro-moments."
When we help a parent wonder about their baby's mind, she concluded, we are strengthening the foundation of that child's future mental health.
