ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of my major assertions, which is shared by a growing number of philosophers, attachment theorists, psychoanalysts, and scholars who understand the importance of learning from experiences with others. People can only know themselves when they have been understood by another who has mirrored back to the subject his or her interpretation of that person’s self.
This suggests that people change, not because of evidenced-based strategies used by therapists to help them recover from abuse, neglect, or another debilitating trauma but instead from an important and new attachment. This new relationship forms a foundation of security and trust that can allow one to learn to mentalize. If we accept that people design themselves after others, in the therapeutic setting it is the quality of the relationship that is significant when considering the importance of attachment, which eventually sets the stage for acquiring the capacity to mentalize.
