Emotional growth unfolds within relationships where thoughts, feelings, and inner experiences can be understood together.
The Center for Reflective Functioning offers psychotherapy, consultation, clinical training, and professional education informed by reflective functioning, psychodynamic theory, attachment, and developmental perspectives.
At the Center, we believe that meaningful clinical and relational change begins with the capacity to see yourself from the outside and others from the inside. Our work bridges psychoanalytic theory, developmental science, attachment research to support clinicians, caregivers, organizations, and systems of care in developing deeper relational understanding and emotional attunement.
Whether through research initiatives, professional training, clinical consultation, or educational programming, the Center is dedicated to helping caregivers, clinicians, educators, and organizations cultivate deeper emotional understanding and relational resilience.
An Emerging Center for Reflective Functioning
The Center for Reflective Functioning was founded by Dr. Tina Adkins to advance reflective functioning, relational understanding, and interdisciplinary scholarship across clinical, caregiving, and educational settings.
Like the capacities it seeks to cultivate, the Center itself is a work in progress — growing thoughtfully, relationally, and over time. Its ongoing vision includes expanded educational programming, collaborative research initiatives, clinical consultation, and the development of a broader professional community grounded in mentalization-based and developmental perspectives.
Rooted in the belief that meaningful growth unfolds within relationships, the Center is committed to fostering deeper understanding of human experience, caregiving, and connection — across disciplines, systems of care, and time.
What is Reflective Functioning?
Reflective functioning, or mentalization, refers to the capacity to understand the behavior of others (and ourselves) in terms of underlying mental states — including thoughts, feelings, intentions, desires, and subjective experience. When this capacity falters, it can contribute to emotional instability, strained relationships, and a wide range of psychological and relational difficulties.
Accurate mentalizing involves pausing to consider what you or another person might be thinking or feeling before reacting. It is the ability to see oneself from the outside and others from the inside.
Rooted in attachment theory, psychoanalysis, and developmental research, reflective functioning plays a central role in emotional regulation, caregiving relationships, psychotherapy, and child development.
The capacity to hold both one’s own internal experience and the experience of others in mind supports greater relational understanding, emotional flexibility, and psychological resilience across clinical, caregiving, and professional contexts.
Tina E. Adkins, Ph.D.
Founder & Director
Dr. Tina Adkins is a psychotherapist, researcher, and educator whose work focuses on reflective functioning, attachment, and emotional development across relationships and systems of care. Drawing from psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, and more than two decades in child welfare and foster care, she works to strengthen the capacity to think about emotional experience with greater curiosity, understanding, and connection.
Current Areas of Focus
Reflective functioning and mentalization • Attachment and caregiving relationships • Foster care and adoption • Psychoanalytic and developmental perspectives • Clinical consultation and professional education