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Mentalization

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Mentalization is a psychological concept used by the psychoanalytic psychologist Peter Fonagy; he employs it to describe the ability to understand the mental state of oneself and others based on overt behaviour.[1] Fonagy sees mentalization as a form of imaginative mental activity, which allow us to perceive and interpret human behaviour in terms of intentional mental states (e.g. needs, desires, feelings, beliefs, goals, purposes, and reasons).[2]

Mentalization has implications for attachment-theory as well as self-development. According to Fonagy, individuals without proper attachment (e.g. due to physical, psychologial or sexual abuse), can have greater difficulties in the development of mentalization-abilities. Attachment history partially determines the strength of mentalizing capacity of individuals. Securely-attached individuals tend to have had a mentalizing primary caregiver, and resultantly have more robust capacities to represent the states of their own and other people’s minds. Early childhood exposure to mentalization can serve to protect the individual from psychosocial adversity.[2] [3]

"The concept of mentalization emerged in the psychoanalytic literature in the late 1960s, but diversified in the early 1990s when Simon Baron-Cohen (not to be confused with his cousin, actor and comedian Sascha Baron Cohen), Chris Frith, and others merged it with research on neurobiological deficits that correlate with autism and schizophrenia. Concomitantly, Peter Fonagy and colleagues applied it to developmental psychopathology in the context of attachment relationships gone awry."[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ UCL (Psychoanalysis Unit) Peter Fonagy's Homepage
  2. ^ a b http://www.riksforeningenpsykoterapicentrum.se/pdf-doc/mbt_training_jan06.pdf
  3. ^ Mechanisms of change in Mentalization_Based_Treatment_on_patients_with_a_Borderline_Personality_Disorder|mentalization-based treatment of BPD. J Clin Psychol. 2006 Apr;62(4):411-30. Fonagy P, Bateman AW.
  4. ^ Allen, J. P., Fonagy, P. (Eds.), Handbook of Mentalization-Based Treatment. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons

Further reading

Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York: Other Press.

  • Peter Fonagy's homepage [1]
  • Anthony Bateman's homepage [2]
  • A summary of mentalization [3]
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