Mentalizing and Otherwise

In an attempt to respond to a philosophical discussion with some colleagues, about the apparent similarities of mental reading Vs. mentalizing.

Mentalizing, is a process that implies a focus on mental states in oneself/others, particularly related to explanations of behavior. Mental states, among other things, influence behaviour. They are a mix of believes, wishes, feelings and thoughts, inside or outside our awareness. Determine what we do or not do with what we "have".

Mentalizing, requires to be thought, both as a process that can be studied in normal healthy subjects, interacting in a combination of socio/bio/psycho issues, as in mentally or emotionally disturbed subjects into the same interactions. There is a lot still to learn about this fascinating field.

A focus on mind, leads to far more uncertain conclusions, as Bateman & Fogany say, than to do so on physical circumstances.

Now: even though, they (B&F) say, that mentalization belongs to the realm of imagination, because it is a about imagining what other people might be thinking or feeling (each person will be lead by their own capacity of imagining, personal history, and mental state in a particular moment) a simple gesture might be interpreted real wrong, getting the person to a biased conclusion. We do that sometimes. Right? " I thought he did not like it because he did not say anything..."

Now, if it would be about imagination basically we would be talking about "Mirror Stage" which is about the "concrete"and not the symbolic - that goes to my Lacanean colleges-So I believe is not exactly imagination what they are talking about. If it was so, this would be no longer interpreting at all, but projecting. Here is where IMGO would be on play, would not it? So I believe they are unintentionally mixing two concepts: one for mentalizing, other for failing on mentalizing. This makes a basic difference.

The ability to understand what might be going through peoples mind is not a new concept, it is called "Theory of the mind".The Symbolic Order is what substitutes for the loss of the immediacy of the world and it is where the void of the subject is filled in by the process of subjectivization. The latter is where the subject is given an identity and where that identity is altered by the Self.
Discontinuity of the organization of Self is included in this level of concreteness, that goes from "abduction" to softer levels such as that "other" people think wrong of them, want to harm them, criticize them, with no reality base -that kind of egosintonic speech such as "I am perfect, THEY have a problem", typical of Personality Disorders-.

Why is it so very difficult to appeal and make them understand that they are not perceiving the reality too well, that it is their own projection in play there. Because there is a failure in the process of mentalizing, and they cannot really differentiate inside/outside. No matter what you say, they will always find a reason to suspect your bad intentions.

This is clearly delusional. It is clearly projective. It is, as you well know, a very primitive defence mechanism, to keep away from themselves their own cruelty and aggression and it is what infants, form birth to six months of age do, in order to not annihilate themselves. Melanie Klein describes this very well, in the paranoid-schizoid position - even though she was half crazy, as J.Lacan always used to say, M.K. still made some genial discoveries-.

So projection is much rather to think that the other will think and know what I do think and know. Mentalizing would be like an updating this knowledge in order to reach the skill to recognize that others might not think or know as we do.

People with disorders in this field, lost the capability of mentalizing. It is all about THEM and not about THE OTHER.

Does it exist such thing? Yes! in an informal way it is called "closed TV circuit".(Read to the end Didi. They are very clear here! ).

(You know, that is the problem when you, psychiatrists, put yourselves to work on therapy. You do not have one bit of theoretical background! Get out of the field!...with all due respect ; / ).

A.O.J.