A contribution the italian validation of the reflective functioning questionnaire

Background and aims.– As described within the psychoanalytic framework (Fonagy & Target, 1998), one crucial aspect of human functioning consists in the Mentalization capacity corresponding to the efforts to understand ourselves and an others. Assessing mentalizing abilities is a complex issue. Only recently (Fonagy et al., 2016), an instrument assessing mentalization has been developed: The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ). However, this instrument has not yet been validated in its Italian version, limiting the range of existing studies on Mentalization. Objective.– To provide a preliminary contribution to the Italian Validation of the RFQ. Methods.– A sample of community participants (N = 130) and a sample of violent offenders (N = 39) fulfilled the Italian version of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ, Fonagy et al., 2016), the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ, Buss & Perry, 1992) and the Person- ality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5; Krueger et al., 2011). Results.– Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported the original bidimensional model of the RFQ. Analyses evidenced a good reliability of both subscales. In the offender sample, the “Certainty about Mental States” subscale of the RFQ was negatively related to measures of pathological personality and aggression. In contrast, the “Uncertainty about Mental States” subscale correlated positively with the PID-5 and the AQ scores. Conclusions.– These preliminary results suggest that the Italian ver- sion of the RFQ shows adequate psychometric properties and can be used in Italian studies. Furthermore, the study highlights the proficiency of the RFQ which provides additional explanation of aggressive behavior in addition to others central variables as such as pathological personality