Mentalization

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mentalization is a psychological term, which describes the ability to understand the mental state of oneself and others based on overt behaviour.[1] Mentalization is 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).

Mentalization has implications for attachment-theory as well as self-development. 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. Secure individuals, who as an infant had a mentalizing primary caregiver, have more robust capacities to represent the states of their own and other people’s minds and this can serve to protect them from psychosocial adversity.[2]

"The concept of mentalization emerged in the psychoanalytic literature in the late 1960s but diversified in the early 1990s when Simon Baron-Cohen, Chris Frith, and others applied it to neurobiologically based deficits in autism and schizophrenia and, concomitantly, Peter Fonagy and his colleagues applied it to developmental psychopathology in the context of attachment relationships gone awry."[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ UCL (Psychoanalysis Unit) Peter Fonagy's Homepage
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ Allen, J. P., Fonagy, P. (Eds.), Handbook of Mentalization-Based Treatment. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons

[edit] Further reading

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

[edit] External links

Peter Fonagy's homepage [1]

Anthony Bateman's homepage [2]

A summary of mentalization [3]