Abstract:

The soft skills are an important element for personal development. These skills fall into three main groupings: cognitive skills, social skills, and self-regulatory skills. In the adult development of soft skills, they represent a key to success for the world of work and for daily social relationships. In adolescents and young adults, they represent a key to success in university life: both socially and academically. University students encounter many similar problems and often a support path based on enhancing mentalization processes can be a key to success. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of enhancing affective mentalization processes in a group of university students through a specific psychological counseling project. In particular, this study examined a sample of 50 students (23 males and 27 females). The main inclusion criteria were: (a) age between 20 and 22 years; (b) no psychopathological disorder (assessed through the administration of SCID 5); (c) normal cognition (assessed by Raven's Progressive Matrices); (d) average at t0 between 24 and 25 (homogeneity of academic performance). The RFQ-8 questionnaire was used to monitor the progress of mentalizing processes. Specifically, psychological counseling was performed for 3 months, the RFQ-8 was administered pre- or post-treatment, and the mean was reviewed post- treatment. The results show: (a) a significant improvement in terms of affective mentalization and (b) an increase in the students’ academic average.

Keywords:

Mentalization, Soft Skills, Counseling.