WHAT IS MENTALIZING AND WHY DO IT?

1
Jon G. Allen, PhD
The Menninger Clinic

Were very grateful to the publishers, American Publishing Ltd, for agreeing
to us including this chapter from the book: Allen, Fonagy, & Bateman,
Mentalizing in Clinical Practice, Washington, DC: American Psychiatric
Publishing, Inc. forthcoming. www.appi.org

You are mentalizing when youre aware of whats going on in your mind or
someone elses. Youre mentalizing when you puzzle, Why did I do that?
or wonder, Did I hurt her feelings when I said that? Your ability to
mentalize enables you to make sense of behavior. You hear a car door slam
shut and it draws your attention. Then you see the man who slammed the car
door reaching into his pockets and coming up empty handed. He starts to get
agitated, tries unsuccessfully to open the door, looks through the car window
toward the ignition, and starts cussing. All this behavior would be
bewildering if you didnt automatically infer that hes frustrated because he
locked his keys in the car.
Mentalizing, you automatically interpret behavior as based on mental
states, such as desires, beliefs, and feelings. The man wanted to be able to
drive his car, believed that hed have a hard time getting back into it, and felt
frustratedperhaps also helpless. Sometimes you need to mentalize to
interpret your own behavior: How could I have been so gullible as to loan
him money when I knew full well that hes totally undependable? Often you
need to mentalize to understand your emotional reactions: Why am I this
upset about her not calling me back right away? Why am I so sensitive right
now? Ive been feeling like a lot of people have been letting me down
lately
Such questions are merely the launching point for how you might
explain things to yourself. Seeing the man become frustrated about locking
himself out of his car might stimulate your own memories of being locked
out and a recognition that this happened when you were distracted. Using
this further understanding from your own self-exploration will enhance the
interaction if you go over to sympathize with the man and to see if you can
help.
A shorthand idea for mentalizing: keeping mind in mind. Mentalizing
requires attention and takes mental effort; its a form of mindfulness, that is,
being mindful of what others are thinking and feeling as well as being
mindful of your own thoughts and feelings. Thus mentalizing is similar to
empathy. But mentalizing goes beyond empathizing, because it also includes
awareness of your own state of mindempathizing with yourself. Thus,
youre mentalizing when youre going in to ask your boss for some time off
and youre thinking, Im feeling anxious. It makes sense that Id feel anxious
right now, because he might feel put out. Well, I can tolerate that. If your
boss unfairly gives you grief about taking some time off, youd be
mentalizing in thinking, Im getting frustrated, so I need to choose my
words carefully. I need to acknowledge that this makes his life more difficult
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From JG Allen, P Fonagy, & AW Bateman (forthcoming): Mentalizing in Clinical Practice,

Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

and let him know how important the time off is to me. Thus you are
mentalizing when you demonstrate your understanding of your bosss
annoyance and try to address it while simultaneously explaining your own
point of view.
The following situations call for mentalizing:

Comforting a friend in distress

Clearing up a misunderstanding with a friend
Calming down a child who is having a tantrum
Developing strategies to refrain from overeating
Persuading an employer to give you a raise
Proposing marriage
Describing symptoms and problems to your psychiatrist

As all these examples attest, mentalizing is common sense; we are all

natural psychologists in trying to understand behavior and figuring out why
people think and feel the way they do. Mentalizing is like language in being
innate: we all develop the capacity to mentalize, barring genetic conditions
such as autism. Yet, like language, mentalizing develops best in an
environment conducive to learning.
Like using language, you mentalize naturally; most of the time you
dont need to think about it. You dont need to be a linguist to use language,
and you dont need to become a professional psychologist to mentalize. Yet
mentalizing is a skill that can be developed to varying degrees. Failing to
mentalize can contribute to serious problems in relationships. Your friends,
family members, or spouse will be unhappy if youre oblivious to their needs
and feelings or you continually misinterpret their actions. Psychiatric
disorders such as depression and substance abuse notoriously interfere with
mentalizing, because they compromise the capacity for flexible thinking, lead
to distorted views of the self, and undermine attention to others experience.
When such disorders develop, you can benefit from learning about
mentalizing, paying greater attention to doing it, and becoming more skillful
at it.
Developmental psychologists have been researching mentalizing over
the past few decades, so we now know a lot about how it develops and how
we can improve it. This article describes different aspects of mentalizing,
conditions that affect mentalizing, the nature of skillful mentalizing, and the
benefits of mentalizing. We conclude by revealing our main goal: to influence
your attitude toward mentalizing.
Aspects of Mentalizing
Mentalizing involves awareness of yourself as well as others. Our
colleague, psychiatrist Jeremy Holmes at the University of Exeter in the UK,
puts it this way: mentalizing is seeing yourself from the outside and others
from the inside. Mentalizing with regard to others takes effort: you cannot
merely assume that others think and feel the way you do, although they
might; you must shift perspectives and try to take their point of view. Thus
the more you know about another person, the more accurate your
mentalizing will be. For example, you are probably better at understanding a
person with whom you have an intimate relationship and others who are
close to you than you are at grasping the motives of more distant
acquaintances. Yet, as we will discuss below, you might be aware that you

also have greatest difficulty mentalizing when you experience conflict with
those to whom you are closest. Each of us runs into circumstances that
interfere with our ability to mentalize, usually when we feel threatened or
find ourselves in the throes of intense emotional arousal.
You cannot take for granted your ability to mentalize with respect to
yourself: even though you live in your own mind, you dont necessarily
always know how your mind is working. All of us are capable of selfdeception. Its common for others to see aspects of ourselves to which we are
blind. Often, we know ourselves best through dialogue with others: you
might start out just feeling vaguely upset and, over the course of the
conversation with a trusted friend, come to recognize that youre feeling
hurt, ashamed, and resentful. Thus others, seeing us from the outside, can
help us see ourselves more clearly from the inside.
You can mentalize in different time frames. You can mentalize about
specific mental states in the present: Im getting all worked up for nothing.
Shes starting to get impatient with me. Also, you can reflect on past mental
states: Now that Ive calmed down, I can see that she intended her criticism
to help me, not to belittle me. In addition, you can mentalize by anticipating
future mental states: If I dont let her know that Ill be late, shell worry and
then Ill feel guilty.
Most important, you can transform hindsight into foresight:
mentalizing about problems in the past can enhance your ability to mentalize
in the future. I know Im extremely sensitive to criticism and I get so
defensive that I cant listen to her point of view. Next time, Ill try to think
about where shes coming from, listen carefully to what shes saying, and
avoid another blow up.
Just as you can mentalize about the present, past, or future, you can
mentalize with a narrower or broader perspective. You can focus narrowly
on a persons feelings at a given moment: She looks irritated. In addition,
you can be aware of the broader context of her mental state: She thinks I
lied to her. You can even take into account a broad swath of the persons
history: Shes extremely sensitive to any sign of betrayal because of her
fathers recurrent untrustworthy behavior. Thus, expanding the scope of
mentalizing may take into account a broader time frame as well as the wider
network of interactions and relationships that influence an individuals mental
states.
The same applies to your own mental states: self-understanding often
requires you to consider the wider context beyond the present moment. You
might wonder, Why am I so upset that he didnt acknowledge how much
work I did on this project? Mentalizing, you might realize that youve been
feeling unappreciated for a long time, and not having this particular project
recognized was the last straw. You can take this line of thinking all the way
back to your childhood, for example, connecting your current feelings with
repeated disappointments in the past, when a parent routinely failed to
attend school plays or sports events. Your feelings about the present
invariably are colored by your past experiences, and mentalizing involves
being aware of this coloringthe baggage from the pastso that you can
see the present for what it is.
You can mentalize more or less consciously. Mentalizing explicitly is a
conscious process in which you think deliberately about the reasons for
actionsoften when you are puzzled: Why would she have said that?
How could I have forgotten to do that when I knew it was so important to
him? You mentalize explicitly when you put your feelings into words,

whether youre trying to make sense of yourself in your own mind or

needing to express what youre feeling to someone else.
Most often, however, you dont have time to mentalize explicitly when
youre interacting with others; youre mentalizing implicitly, that is,
spontaneously and intuitively, without thinking about it. Mentalizing
implicitly, youre guided by your gut feelings. When your friend tells you
about a major disappointment, you automatically adopt an expression
combining sadness and caring, leaning forward to make emotional contact.
Thus the natural empathy you have for others is based on your ability to
mentalize implicitly. You also mentalize implicitly when you engage in
conversation, keeping the other persons perspective in mind and taking
turns naturally without having to think about it. Youre likely to find
conversations annoying when others fail to mentalize, mentioning names of
people you dont know without taking into consideration that you have no
idea who theyre talking about.
When all goes well, you can get by with mentalizing intuitively and
implicitly. Using language naturally, you dont need to think about your
choice of words until youre misunderstood. Similarly, you need to mentalize
deliberately and explicitly when you hit a snag in a relationship. Much of your
explicit mentalizing takes the form of narrative, through which you make
your own and others actions intelligible. You ceaselessly create stories
involving thoughts and feelings. Think of a time when you had to justify
your actions to someone, such as asking your boss for time off. Think about
how you explain your emotional reactions to someone elses behavior. Think
about how squabbling children behave when a parent confronts them. Each
one comes up with a different story. Then the parent needs to mentalize to
sort it out and intervene appropriately.
You begin learning to mentalize early in life by creating stories to
account for your actions. And you do this in your own mind. For better and
at times for worse, you continually tell yourself stories about yourself, and
these stories influence who you are. Self-critical stories, for example, can
undermine your self-confidence. Nothing I do ever turns out right, no
matter how hard I try. Im useless. If anything goes wrong, Im always the
one to be blamed. The story of my life
Ideally, mentalizing, like story telling more generally, is creative:
mentalizing, you come up with fresh perspectives, seeing yourself and others
from more than one point of view. Thus youre mentalizing when you
wonder, Im really irked at him. What else might I be feeling? I guess he hurt
my feelings. Similarly, youre mentalizing when, after you think, What an
idiot I am, you reconsider and think, I made an understandable mistake; I
was trying to do too much at once. Jeremy Holmes insightfully construed
psychotherapy as a story-making and story-breaking process.
Mentalizing, you move out of old ruts in the stories you create about yourself
and others.
Conditions for Mentalizing
Children learn language best in a language-rich environment, by
hearing speech, being spoken to, and being listened to and responded to
when they are learning to speak. Similarly, children learn to mentalize best
when their family members are sensitive to their states of mind, especially
their emotions. Children learn to mentalize by being mentalized, that is, when
others have their mind in mind. Mentalizing will not flourish in emotionally

neglectful relationships. Rather, mentalizing develops best in trusting and

safe relationshipswhat we call secure attachment relationships. Moreover,
once children begin to acquire language, talking openly with them about
their own and others needs, feelings, fears, and reasons for actions gives
mentalizing a great boost. As with all other skills, mentalizing is learned
through practice, and learning continues throughout the lifetime.
Developing the ability to mentalize is one thing; using it consistently is
another. Some conditions are more conducive to mentalizing than others.
Your level of emotional arousal is a major factor in being able to mentalize at
any given moment. Mentalizing goes best when your level of emotional
arousal is neither too high nor too low. You need to feel relatively safe to
mentalize. If youre feeling threatenedangry or frightenedyoull be more
concerned with self-protection than with taking the time and effort to
mentalize. In states of high emotional arousal, the instinctive fight-or-flight
response takes over, and mentalizing falls by the wayside. You can feel so
panicky or infuriated that you cant think straight, much less consider what
someone else is thinking or feeling.
As we already indicated, youre generally likely to have most difficulty
mentalizing in emotionally close attachment relationships when conflicts arise
and feelings run high. Catch-22: mentalizing is most difficult when you most need
to do it. Thats why much of our mentalizing takes place after the fact;
fortunately, you can translate hindsight into foresight and thereby turn your
misunderstandings into understandings, much like you might do with your
partner after a falling out. And you may need professional help in the form of
individual or couples therapy so that you can learn to mentalize when youre
experiencing conflict or feeling threatened in your attachment relationships.
Mentalizing enables you to be aware of your feelings as well as those of your
partner. To engage in constructive problem solving, each person needs to
keep their own mind as well as the others mind in mind. And the best way to
engage another person in mentalizing is to be doing it yourself.
Either too much or too little emotional arousal can interfere with
mentalizing. If youre too depressed or lethargic, you wont be inclined to
mentalize. Mentalizing takes effort, and you must be motivated to do it. If
youre indifferent to others needs or feelings, you wont be inclined to
mentalize.
Skillful Mentalizing
The two hallmarks of skillful mentalizing are accuracy and richness.
Mentalizing accurately means seeing others for who they really are as well as
seeing yourself for who you really are. Mentalizing requires imagination, for
example, being able to project your own experience into others, putting
yourself in their shoes, and imagining how you might feel if you were in their
situation. But projecting from your own experience can be a slippery slope;
your imagination can lead to distorted mentalizing. For example, feeling
ashamed and inadequate or being excessively self-critical, you might wrongly
imagine that others look down on you or judge you harshly. In so doing, you
would be mentalizing, but you would be mentalizing inaccurately.
We are often asked, Can you mentalize too much? Frequently, this
question reveals ineffective or inaccurate mentalizing such as obsessing or
worrying about what someone else is thinking or ruminating about your
past failures and deficiencies. Skillful mentalizing, on the contrary, is flexible

and exploratory; youre not stuck in a rut. Of course, as with all else, health
lies in balance; theres more to life than mentalizing.
As problems with worrying and ruminating illustrate, mentalizing
accurately means grounding your imagination in reality; you might do this
by asking others what they think and feel instead of relying solely on your
assumptions or projections. If you think someone is put out with you or
critical of what youve done but youre not sure, you can ask. If youre
unsure of your interpretation of a situation, you can check out how others
saw it. Often, different people interpret the same situation in different ways.
This brings us to the essence of mentalizing: recognizing that there are many
mental perspectives on the same outer reality. Thats mental reality.
Richness in mentalizing refers to the process of mental elaboration
making the effort to use your imagination and think beyond the surface. A
father is failing to mentalize when he dismisses his sons tears as showing that
hes just a spoiled brat rather than considering the basis of his sons
disappointment or frustration. Similarly, thinking that a co-worker is just a
jerk is a non-mentalizing view. You might think of yourself in the same nonmentalizing way: Im just lazy or Im just impulsive. The word, just, is
a tip-off to non-mentalizing; it closes off thoughtful exploration of the
potential multitude of reasons for behavior.
In her book, The Sovereignty of Good, novelist and philosopher Iris
Murdoch provided a now-celebrated example of a mother-in-laws shift in
perspective regarding her daughter-in-law, a shift in viewpoint that illustrates
a transformation from inaccurate to accurate mentalizing. Initially, the
mother-in-law found her daughter-in-law to be crude, unrefined, and
juvenile; she thought her son had married beneath him. Outwardly, she
treated her daughter-in-law with impeccable kindness but, inwardly, she felt
scorn. Yet the mother-in-law was uncomfortable with her attitude and
wondered if she were being snobbish. She put her mind to seeing her
daughter-in-law accurately, justly, and lovingly. She was determined to see
her daughter-in-law for who she really was. Through a concerted effort of
attention and imagination, she came to see her daughter-in-law not as vulgar
but rather as refreshingly simple, spontaneous, and delightfully youthfula
dramatic shift of perspective.
Because mentalizing is inherently open-ended, allowing for multiple
perspectives, you know youve stopped mentalizing whenever you have a
sense of certainty. Youve stopped mentalizing when you declare, I know
you really dont want me here! Youve shifted into mentalizing when you
say, Im thinking you really dont want me hereis that so?
The Benefits of Mentalizing
The most obvious benefit of mentalizing is engaging in fulfilling
relationships with others, particularly those with whom you are emotionally
attached. Mentalizingeach person having the others mind in mindlies at
the heart of intimacy. Mentalizing skillfully also enables you to influence
others effectively, taking their point of view into account while respecting
their individuality. When you fail to mentalize, you tend to impose your point
of view and your will on others, trying to force them to comply with your
wishes, needs, or beliefs. Conflict, antagonism, and resentment are bound to
ensue. And mentalizing not only allows you to influence others but also
opens you up to being influenced by others. You could not learn from others if

you were unable to have their mind in your mind. Healthy relationships
depend on it.
Ironically, while mentalizing develops best in secure attachment
relationships in childhood, one advantage of secure attachments is that you
typically dont have to put too much conscious effort into mentalizing as long
as things are going smoothly. You will need to put effort into mentalizing,
however, when you are in competitive relationships as well as when you are
not sure of another persons trustworthiness. If you are naively trustingnot
making the effort to discern the other persons true intentions or motives
you can put yourself in danger. Thus, in a new relationship, cautious appraisal
as well as being attuned to your gut reactions is essential. Failing to mentalize
can be even more calamitous if the other person senses your naivet through
their own mentalizing but then exploits your innocence for personal gain.
Such misuse of mentalizing becomes a way of gratifying oneself or furthering
ones own interests rather than a self-reflective process or joint project of
mutual understanding. Of course, some leaders of organizations climb the
competitive ladder in this way, and con-men also must understand others
minds of they are to be successful. Like any other skill, mentalizing can be
misused.
Mentalizing not only is essential to good relationships with others but
also to your relationship with yourself. Just as you need to influence others,
you need to be able to influence yourself, for example, when you want to
change your feelings, attitudes, thought patterns, or behavior. To influence
yourself, you must know yourself and be attuned to yourself, keeping your
own mind in mind. If youre struggling with an addiction, for example, you
need to anticipate situations that will tempt you and then steer clear of them.
Mentalizing your emotions is most important and most difficult. You
can be immersed in an emotional state without mentalizing. You can be
emotionally agitated and appear tense and edgy to others without being
aware of your feelings. Or you may be dimly aware of feeling out of sorts
but not be clear about just what you are feeling or why. Mentalizing emotion
requires feeling and thinking about feeling at the same time, clarifying your
feelings and their basis. Your feelings are your gut-level guide to your needs
and to how your relationships are going. You feel annoyed when someone
invades your space, and your annoyance prompts you to stand up for
yourself. When youre aware of your feelings through mentalizing, youre in
the best position to get your needs met effectively. You can express your
feelings to others accordingly and thus solve the problems that your feelings
are signaling: I dont like it when you just barge in without knocking. Even
when its not a good idea to express your feelings outwardly to others, you
can at least express them inwardly to yourself. Ideally, you can take an
understanding and compassionate attitude toward your feelings, just as you
would wish others to do. You might not want to tell your boss how angry
you are about his being unreasonable, but you might say to yourself, I cant
believe how aggravating this isno wonder I was anxious about asking him
for time off! And you might express your feelings later to a trusted friend as
well.
Mentalizing your emotions also enables you to refrain from impulsive
and self-defeating behaviorstorming out of your bosss office. Mentalizing
is like pushing a pause buttonnot merely counting to ten but also giving
yourself time to think about your needs and feelings and the best way to
manage them rather than employing desperate measures to quell them. For
example, mentalizing enables you to recognize, tolerate, regulate, and

express your feelings of frustration rather than having to drink to the point
of intoxication to get rid of them.
A Mentalizing Attitude
To repeat, mentalizing is like language: short of rare genetic
abnormalities or extreme deprivation, we all learn to talk and we all learn to
mentalize. Yet all of us can learn to speak and write more articulately, and all
of us can learn to mentalize more effectively and consistently. The most
frequent problem with mentalizing is not lacking the basic ability but rather
failing to cultivate it and put it to use. When youre having trouble in close
relationships or difficulty managing your own emotional states, youll need
to pay more attention to mentalizing and put more effort into it. You may
need professional help. Weve said that the best way to influence another
person to mentalize is to do it yourself. This is what we therapists aspire to
do: by mentalizing, we help our patients to mentalize. In fact, we believe that
the success of all forms of therapy rests on mentalizing on the part of patients
and their therapists.
As therapists, we wrote this article to inspire what we call a mentalizing
attitude, that is, an attitude of openness, inquisitiveness, and curiosity about
whats going on in others minds and in your own. This mentalizing stance
requires tolerance for ambiguitycomfort with not knowing. Mentalizing
involves exploring possibilities with an open-minded attitude, a sense that
theres always more to the story. Accordingly, this article is a mere
introduction.