ABSTRACT
Mentalizing involves a joint thinking and feeling about the feelings, thoughts and mental states of both self and others. As a concept it includes both empathy and open, re¯ective understanding in relation to both self and others. It involves a stance of curiosity and enquiry. Mentalizing also involves an acceptance that there are multiple in¯uences and explanations behind the behaviour of self and others. It is mostly an implicit and preconscious process and we mentalize regularly without realizing it. Developing the capacity to implicitly mentalize is desirable, although in psychotherapy we also seek to develop the ability to explicitly and consciously mentalize. Poor or absent mentalizing, or breakdown of mentalization, becomes a vicious cycle in mental health problems: `psychiatric disorders impair mentalizing and impaired mentalizing contributes to psychiatric disorders' (Tobias et al., 2006: 255).
