ABSTRACT
Fonagy et al. (2004) de®ne mentalization as `the process by which we realize that having a mind mediates our experience of the world' (p. 3) and they view this process as essential to self organization and affect regulation. They consider that the re¯ective function involves both a self-re¯ective and an interpersonal component comprising an ability to tell inner from outer reality, fantasy from reality, and internal emotional processes from interpersonal interactions. In developing a `theory of mind', the young child gradually develops a picture, a sense of other people's minds, that enables the child to respond to his `conception of others' beliefs, feelings, attitudes, desires, hopes, knowledge, imagination, pretense, deceit, intentions, plans, and so on' (Fonagy et al., 2004: 24, italics in original). In this way the child begins to experience other people's behaviour as predictable and meaningful. The re¯ective function operates outside conscious awareness and is related to skills we acquire that become part of our implicit, non-voluntary procedural memory, which in¯uences our social behaviour and shapes our responses to others.
