top of page

What is Mentalizing?

bristolfamilyschoo

Updated: 4 days ago

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”


 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page