Discussion

Our five contributors have given a fascinating variety of answers to the question: How does one person know what is in the mind of another? The approaches they offer reflect two paths taken by psychoanalysts to answer it: (a) a clinical inquiry into processes such as transient identification, empathy, reflective function, projective-identification, and the influence of culture; and (b) research in cognitive and affective development, and neurophysiology. The issue editor placed the Jurist article first—a placement that I believe accords with the stimulus given to this issue by the Fonagy group's introduction of mentalizing and mentalization to the analytic vocabulary.

Jurist notes that the concept of mentalization is borrowed from the theory of mind, a cognitive approach. He argues that, for the concept to be useful to psychoanalysis, it must be filled out by inclusion of affect, emotional style, and character as significant influences on the development of interest in and knowledge of others. He presents the term mentalized affectivity as “an appealing way to capture both how the analyst comes to know the mind of the patient and how the patient knows the mind of the analyst” (p. 290). In the course of attachment, the mind of the caregiver offers an opportunity for infants to learn “that others and ultimately they, too, possess mental states” (p. 291). The Fonagy group presents a developmental schema that valorizes false belief research leading to “mentalization which unfolds around the ages of 4 and 5 years old” (p. 291). Jurist notes that some research suggests that children younger than 4 or 5 can discern false belief, even prelinguistic infants.

I question the precise timetable of 4 or 5 presented for mentalization, based on theory of mind and false belief. I believe that it leaves out too much of the subtle fluidity of younger children's exchanges with their environment of family and peers across a domain of different motivational systems. For example