ess of the moods and mindsets of others, it also enables us to know what our own states of mind and body mean. Our brain–minds assemble information about the state of our body, the input of our senses, and our associative memories to grasp our own intentionality. We mentalize explicitly by reflecting on experiences, conscious narratives, and empathic communication with others. Our “social brains” have evolved over the eons to become highly specialized in “reading” others’ minds, and our own. Menninger Clinic psychologist and mentalization expert Jon Allen and colleagues believe that mentalization is at the heart of emotional and social intelligence, and is central to all interpersonal experience.
Fonagy asserts that mentalization represents the epitome of human cognitive evolution and is the foundation of all effective psychotherapy. In fact, research has shown that when people lose their ability to mentalize their experience—usually in the context of high affect and threats to emotional security—they have a hard time making sense of other people’s behavior and their own. They become reactive, impulsive, and self-centered, and lack perspective.
Rather than being an entirely new form of treatment, mentalization-based therapy contributes to our understanding of what happens in many different approaches. Fonagy argues that achieving more stable and robust mentalization constitutes success in most treatments because it enables people to regulate their own moods more effectively and think coherently about themselves and what they want. By focusing on mentalization as a skill, therapists help clients understand more of the connection between how they feel, what they want, and how they act by themselves or with others.
Mentalization encourages a nonjudgmental attitude of curiosity, inquisitiveness, and open-mindedness toward the client’s subjectivity. Rather than assuming a role of expert, the therapist adopts a “not-knowing” stance, founded in the belief that we come to know what it’s like for another by inquiry, not by assumptions or formulations or by explaining clients to themselves. It’s a here-and-now, process-oriented approach. The therapist encourages the client to think about his or her experience, the goal being to learn to “think about feeling, and feel about thinking.” The therapist guides the client to step back and take perspective on their experience together in therapy: “Yes, that’s one possible meaning; what are others?” “How do you imagine it looks from my point of view?” He or she listens to the client’s narrative and seeks to explore the aspects that are being neglected.
In my own practice, a focus on mentalization has deepened my understanding of the balance between affect and cognition and the need to integrate these aspects of experience. Of course, we all know, theoretically, that the therapeutic connection is at the heart of all good therapy, but understanding the moment-to-moment processes of mentalization can deepen a therapist’s understanding of just how shifts in the relationship can lead to lasting therapeutic change.
This blog is excerpted from "Mentalization: Something New or Just Old Wine in New Bottles?" by Steven Krugman. The full version is available in the March/April 2013 issue, Clinical Wisdom: Who Needs It?
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Tags: addiction | body language | borderline | borderline personality disorder | Dan Siegel | eating disorders | emotion | emotional brain | emotional connection | emotional learnings | feelings | Mentalization | Mindfulness | Steven Krugman | Trauma