Mentalizing is...
'The imaginative activity of making sense of the actions of oneself and others on the basis
of intentional mental states such as desires, feelings and beliefs'
'So, mentalizing is what we do when we are imagining what might be going on in the
mind of someone, underneath the behaviour that we see on the outside'. ‘We could
think of it as the inside story’.
We can mentalize ourselves... "Why do I keep getting into this same situation?... what
am I thinking or feeling that means I keep ending up here?’’
We can mentalize each other.... “My mum doesn’t seem herself tonight...I wonder if it’s
because she’s worrying about... or maybe she’s been thinking about...’’
Mentalizing is a uniquely human process. It is something that we do automatically,
often without conscious thought, in our every-day interactions. This is known as Implicit
Mentalizing. An example might be, if I see someone walking around looking intently at
a map on their phone, I automatically think they might be lost or a tourist trying to find
their way round.
We can also mentalize in a more conscious and verbal way. For example, in a therapeutic
context with a client, we may try to understand with them, their mental states or the
mental states of others, that underly certain actions. This is known as Explicit
Mentalizing. An example might be, if I am talking with a friend about a recent exchange
with her mother I might offer, “I wonder whether, when you saw that text from your
mother, that really made you feel quite upset?”
Almost all aspects of social interaction involve the capacity to mentalize: to understand
the other person's behaviour in terms of the activity that has taken place inside their
minds – their thoughts, feelings, goals and intentions.
Imagine if we never had any sense of other people’s feelings, beliefs or
intentions...
Making sense of others’ behaviour is an imaginative process, in that we have to infer why
others might have behaved in a particular way. So, mentalizing is what we do when we
are imagining what might be going on in someone else's mind, underneath the behaviour
that we see on the outside.
Similarly, this applies for making sense of our own behaviour too. Therefore, mentalizing
is about imagining other people's minds from the inside, and one's own from the outside.
Two concepts that go hand in hand with mentalizing are empathy and mindfulness.
Empathy is sensing feelings and emotions in others and attempting to understand them,
even if we disagree or feel differently. It has two sides: Tuning in and imagination:
Tuning in is the intuitive ability to read facial expressions and body language. Humans have
special ‘mirror neurons’ in the brain that react when watching someone do something. This
allows us to perceive the person’s thoughts. In empathising with someone else we usually
experience a little bit of what they are feeling ourselves.
Imagination is ‘putting our self in someone else’s shoes’, suspending our own view of
the world and thinking of how they may be experiencing something.
Another concept, mindfulness, originated from Buddhism. Mindfulness describes a skill
of having enhanced attention to, and awareness of, a current experience. It requires a
person to be open to sensations without judging or coming to conclusions about them. It
allows a person to mentalize by focusing the mind.
Mindfulness aids mentalizing by helping to put a ‘pause’ between our thoughts, feelings
and actions.
The difference between mentalizing and mindfulness is that mindfulness is about our
own mind, whereas mentalizing accounts for both our own and others’ states of
mind. When someone is mindful of another mind, they are mentalizing. We could say
then that mentalizing sits somewhere between mindfulness and empathy.
Mentalizing and mindfulness of a current experience requires the ability to rapidly shift
focus from full participation to stepping back to allow observation and reflection,
and then returning to participate again (a ‘self-reflection loop’).
Origins of the theory
Mentalization originates as a hybrid idea from: Philosophy of Mind, Attachment studies,
Systems Theory, Psychoanalysis, research on Social Cognitive Development and
Neuroscience.
Mentalizing and the Brain
It is thought that the human brain is essentially
made up of three different brain structures: the
brainstem, the limbic system and the cortex.
1. The brainstem: The reptilian or primitive part
of the brain. This part of the brain is responsible
for controlling our basic, vital body functions,
such as breathing and heart rate. It allows us to
react instinctively to avoid danger, find food,
and procreate. The brainstem is the first brain
structure to develop.
2. The limbic system (including the amygdala and hippocampus): The emotional
part of the brain. The limbic system is at the centre of our emotions – monitoring,
understanding and building emotional connections. This system develops during
adolescence. Adolescents have lots of emotions, which they sometimes struggle to
control! The control or brake for the emotions is the frontal lobe/prefrontal cortex.
3. The frontal lobe/prefrontal cortex: The analytical part of the brain.
The cortex interprets and makes sense of feelings, emotions and situations that occur. It
is responsible for reflecting on and processing information. This area is influenced by
environment and educational experience during childhood and throughout adolescence.
As the brain develops, it creates memories and
uses these as templates to interpret other
experiences and direct our behaviour. If we never
reflect on these templates or check their
accuracy, they get stronger. However, if we do
reflect, they can be changed. Mentalizing is this
ability to reflect on the emotional,
instinctive responses in ourselves and
others. When we start to mentalize, our thinking
processes move from the primitive and emotional
parts of the brain to the analytical,
reflective brain.
The ability to mentalize emerges more fully at around 4 years of age, when a child starts
to recognize more easily that a person may think and feel differently from him/herself and
can start to problem solve, accounting for others’ perspectives and views.
Sometimes, children aren’t shown effective ways of managing their emotions or do not
develop them because of their temperament. As a result, their ‘templates’ for managing
emotions can be inadequate and their ways of responding can be ineffective (especially in
times of crisis and perceived threat).
Mentalizing is disrupted by stressful situations and is fragile and all of us are
susceptible to breaks in mentalizing. Our capacity to mentalize will fluctuate
throughout the course of a day and we will rarely stay in a mentalizing or non
mentalizing state for very long. However, people without effective templates can
struggle more than others and use other coping mechanisms, such as self-harm,
substance abuse and impulsive behaviour, to manage stress. Sometimes, this can further
stop mentalizing/reflecting, making the emotional and primitive parts of the brain more
active and dominant.
Mentalizing helps us to predict our and other’s behaviours and make sense of the
relational world around us. It is a profoundly social capacity and is an attitude to
understanding ourselves and others which focuses on understanding internal states
rather than solely concentrating on behaviours.
Helpful quotes for understanding and explaining Mentalizing –
“Having Mind in Mind”
“Understanding Misunderstandings”
“Mindfulness of Minds”
“Seeing oneself from the outside and others from the inside”
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