Peter Fonagy, Anna Freud Centre Chief Executive: What is Mentalization? interview

[@Istrice963]

The way Mr Fonaggy speaks and explains is so inspiring.

[@andrewbarley6930]

He has a gift, like Irvin Yalom I think, of communicating complex ideas in a simple understandable way.

[@andreapandypetrapan]

Dear Ghost of AF, and Dr Peter Fonagy, This sounds very like the Jungian and Buddhistic ideal of using our vast and female collective consciousness to empathetically and sympathetically model ourselves and other people (at all levels of our embodied psychical being) and indeed all reality (which may well be quite pan-psychical) from a non-egotistical perspective. Combined with highly inventive artistry (especially dynamical arts such as symphonic music and live theatre) and sensuous-eroticised creative imagination. Nice incorporation of the interpersonal dynamics and conversations and feedback mechanisms, in classical "Kleinian and Winnicott" childhood object relations and attachment theory. Especially the dynamics between mothers and infants, and the shattering importance of our mother's morally-psychically-emotionally-politically "accurate and existentially reinforcing and rightly calibrated" domain of loving and nurturing feedback to her infant, on the infant's states of being-feeling-comprehension. Like our loving and nurturing Kali Ma. Behold the mountingly subtle and complex iterations of "You think-feel that I think-feel this about you, and about her, and her feelings about us and them." Excellent emphasis on the interpermeating "total work-of-art" of our psyche-cognition-sensuous-eroticised-life-positive-embodiment. Also top-notch commentary upon the deadly effect of parents and caregivers who consistently supplying inaccurate reflections of our tentative and developing sensuous-cognitive-embodies states. There is, however, a rather wild and somewhat incautious conjecture at 1:52 about the whole of the non-human organic domain on the planet (our sacred realm of Gaia and Kali Ma), as to its supposed limitations on powers of modelling themselves and other psychical entities. That is some of the wildest human-centric vanity masquerading as objective empirical science I've hear in ages. Bonobo monkeys, dolphins, elephants, orcas, hugely complex social minds such has in ant-colonies and million-strong flocks of birds and wildebeests? Not even in hunting packs of lionesses, who must collectively pre-empt to the depths of several moves ahead how their prey will react to their stalking and encircling manoeuvres? Especially prey with the protective resources of herds, such has buffalo. The case of hunting lionesses is indeed a conclusive refutation of this Neo-Freudian "pinch too much of human accolade and vanitas". This is where neo-Freudians would do well to study more complex biology and zoology from an evolutionary and inter-species point of view, and indeed open their minds to richer non-human modes of sensuous-inter-psychical shared cognition. Perhaps Dr Peter Fonagy's Hungarian accent, and no doubt sometimes Stalinist experiences post 1956, partly explain this oversight? Such a crushingly Stalinist atmosphere probably did not inculcate a taste for social-political radicalism, not even one supped-up with his mother's nourishing warm breast milk, as she looked with encouraging love into the infant Profs mutually adoring eyes. "Standing in your corner like a candidate for wax, side-walk soci lscientisits don;t get much satisfaction for your cigatette. Time is runign out in our world of patrichal-capitlaist generaotors of aleination and complete comification of all matter nd all psychcial events. Its 11:59 and humanity needs t0 stay alive!" To slightly misquote that Modern Aphrodite and Athean rolled into one, Blondi: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h3WVfn57nqibaqMsi=i9Ub33ppIJLILHH- One must always check out the political and historical origins of ones theorising. And ask the old Roman question - "Cui Bono? What if peopel adopt the advice and attitudes and conduct I recommend. What is the opprotunity cost of promoting this rather than than polticla project? Who prospsers, who makes a buck, and who withers and dies? Let's be more impartially self-aware - physician heal thyself! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 www.ucl.ac.uk/psychoanalysis/people/peter-fonagy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fonagy There's always good money in repackaging the classics in new boxes and book covers, and jumping on board this and that advisory panel. the greasy pole, as the genius Disraeli candidly put it, whether in academia or mainstream politics. We need to elevate humanity onto a higher plane no just of superior odelling of our own psyches and others, but of anit-captialsit and anti-patriachal sensuous-artisitc dliehgt. We dont want to live on charity, w want to kust walk on buy and keep on dreaming! We sit buy and wathcthe rives flow, imagine soehtig of our very own, somehtign we can have at home, I'd build amovie and go just to ave soe dearming At lesat dreaing is stil for free, for now: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ioaWXp-JlKylr80si=A7docE-El_R1zKji We need to demilitarise, decolonialise, dismantle consumer captilasim, and nature-destroying extractive technologies, and captialist imperialism (a death-culture of lunatics and male narcissists masturbating as they lust to press the button on nuclear anihilation) and patriachal-masculine hierachies of power and domination and submission. We need to institute our womanly world of cooperation and playfulness and life-creativity and Aphrodite-Shakti-Dionysian erotic-artitistic ecstacy. Moving on there is a disgracefully zero-grasp of libraries of feminist work on the vast difference between matriarchal and patriarchal world-views. Hence the emphasis on a very patriarchal-masculine propensity for nasty systems of deception, with a view to manipulating mothers and female figures in general. The pontificating Doctor also evinces an entirely non-critical confidence in the possibility of "psychically healthy" bourgeois hetero-normative mono-amorous, capitalist-consumerist families. This is patently inadequate, and dispiritingly accommodationist with patriarchal-capitalism. In fact, this is all so permeated with bourgeois English Bloomsbury, North East London, NHS bureaucratic, grant-syphoning, home-counties social-conservatism, and sub-zero engagement with radical feminist-Marxist critiques, and with non-Anglo-America and non-European cultures and histories, that I almost wet my non-existent M&S Marx & Engels knickers (I never wear them, they are bad for pussie health) in laughter. Just try spinning this stuff in Palestine (whilst avoiding the Zionist patriarchal missiles of death and machine gun assaination squads), or in my beloved Morocco. Hey, my dear sisterhood, let us all gratefully step into the patriarchal time-machine, and head back to 1950s Hertfordshire Welwyn Garden City suburbia. Perhaps the deepest problem with this neo-Freudian psychodynamic and NHS psychiatric- technocratic cult of "greater self and other awareness", is that it commits the naturalistic fallacy with gay and almost touching naivity and abandon. Even if it was practicable (and how many modern utopias have foundered on the notion of universal grater psychiatric health - Weimat was chock-a-b;ock with such like institutes) who is to say that by the pure light of reason, and thereby perceiving everyones deepest conscuious and unconsious perspective, with the perspective of the Budhha and Kali Ma and Lord Shiva and Athena and Isis, we would deduce a humanist and co-operative Nirvana worthy of Voltaire and Annie Besant and Shelley and Mary Wolstancraft? Perhaps we would be compelled to deduce by iron moral-poltical logic that the optimum moral stance for humanity is the incineration of billions in an orgiastic, cataclysmic escatological denoument! Bourgois piety and hundrum English technical-psycho-managerialism (Freud and Klein plus Beveridge, one might mockingly say) needs to be tempred by reading Dante and Machiavelli. Just a few suggestions with love from Darwin, the goddess Athena, the smile of reason on the face of Voltaire, Dawkins, Wagner, Puccini, Marx, Engels, Fromm, Reich, de Beauvoir, Erica Jong, Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Lenin, Hitchcock and Herrmann, the Buddha, Kali Ma, Lord-Lady Shiva, and Jung. IN CONCLUSION - Our sisterhood would urge upon the Ghost of Anna Freud that our absolute and highest feminst-poltical duty is the direct promotion by Feminist Action Squads of our sisterly, life-creative, life-nuturing, radical-feminist-Marxist, capitalism-abolishing, planet-saving, and Gaia-adoring and nature-reintegrationist revolution. To inaugurate indeed our Pan-Africanist, Gaia-integrated, Womanly World Republic of Life-Creativity and Transcendental Erotic Ecstasy. To the extent that theories and practice and ideology and research advance that sacred destiny, it is grist to our female mills. We are first and last female, cooperative, linguistically gifted, deeply emotionally mature, and self-aware, altruistic and other regarding and modelling, social and political, sensuously-embodied, life-creative, erotic-artistic female hominids! We are Femina sapiens! We love to sing and dance and make music and make love and screamingly give birth in public to our blessed daughters, to the symphonic acclaim of our planet-spanning celebratory African sisterhood! kzbin.info/www/bejne/mYCmn2dql92Zq6ssi=S6trGdnnoHhhFPIB kzbin.info/www/bejne/gKjSh2RjrtCgb6csi=Bpa9bTOzeBK1Wiqs kzbin.info/www/bejne/bHy9m5-XnN9li68si=WRKmk8MutlapqJWP kzbin.info/www/bejne/h4nGpHiGdtJ5iK8si=M8q5zsa52LOzrmdG Love, andrea (radical feminist-Marxist scourge of patriarchal-capitalism and bourgeois ideology, and 2nd rate satirist)

[@susanjones9481]

what an amazing tool thank you very much, so simple in a way but so deep and life changing for the child and the family unit

[@baphomet7355]

I think Fonagy is a genious, he really caught a pivotal issue.

[@dolarich]

What a fantastic conceptual development. Thank you

[@hope56]

So cogent and accessible. Thanks for sharing.

[@Ms4WhyNot]

Something that I pick up on (and can see how it would indeed work if provided the same child, but 2 different types of mothers, one anxious and one more regulated) is the concept of an infant over-exaggerating their anxiety when cared for by a mother or care-taker who is highly anxious, HOWEVER : when the same mother is handed 2 very differently wired babies this theory or model falls out the window a little bit: the child's temperament can impact the anxiety response in the mother (or caregiver)! same as the mother would influence the child. A highly-sensitive baby can be a source of panic for a mother from day 1 and if the mother is not provided the care and rest that she needs, then that mother-baby "entity" will escalate in negative energy/emotional experience. Give the mother a different (less sensitive baby, who is more easy to console and less fussy, less demand-avoidant) baby and she will automatically nurture the baby calmly, with much less need of exterior emotional regulation. The family-dynamic environment plays just as much of a role, we are all a product of Genetics PLUS environment. I might not have expressed this concept in the most siuitable terms or made enough sense... but perhaps the example illustrates what I am trying to say : I have witnessed the same mother+father household with 2 babies of very different neurotype. The first baby ADHD and the other ASD (Autism spectrum, highly-sensitive). The ADHD baby was a breeze, easy to console, relaxed, ate almost anything offered to him, mostly content with life on the outisde. The second baby was a massive disruption, nobody got any sleep, baby wouldn't settle unless either the mother or father were holding him, extremely fussy, anxious etc. If the baby's anxiety was only in reaction to the mother's anxiety.. then we would not see this dynamic play out. She had no reason to expect that baby #2 would be any less content or any less relaxed than #1, she had every reason to believe that baby #2 would soon settle into himself the same as #1 had. But they didn't, because the baby himself was of a more anxious nature and would trigger the anxiety of his parents to a greater extent than what baby #1 had done. It would require an "unnatural" amount of external, therapeutic intervention to calm and soothe the mother (or father) sufficiently in order to help them be less reactive to baby #2's highly sensitive neurotype.

[@erich1394]

I was quite satisfied that you took a moment to recognize that we are the only primates who wear shoes. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, lol... Edit: I love what you have to say about constitutional arousal, mentalization, and compounding feedback effects within a family structure or relationship. It's somewhat disheartening that intense attachment can cause a breakdown of mentalization. I want to deny it, but my life experience supports this assertion. How can we make space for emotional intimacy when the resulting attachment can sabotage the safe space required for that intimacy? Do healthier people have the ability to modulate attachment and vulnerability? How does this work?

[@d7k7m7]

Anyone know of how an MFT Intern near Los Angeles and Santa Barbara California in the US can get MBT training? I know Anna Freud center does trainings at UCLA, but they are really expensive.

[@Istrice963]

It is known that antisocial personalities are very much capable of understanding the others and acting upon it. how do you evaluate this in terms of mirroring of parents ?

[@andreapandypetrapan]

Neo-Freudians commit the classical naturalistic fallacy of assuming that reason alone will dictate our moral virtues. Whereas in fact that is an enlightenment act of faith. Psychopaths an arch manipulators have AAA rated powers of modelling other minds and employing feed-back mechanisms to get other to serve their purposes. The just lack any moral code beyond ultra-ego-mania. They can indeed by very creative and entertaining, until their Machiavellian skills are turned upon you and your sisterly friends! Love andrea

[@honeybunny5325]

Thank you got me into deep thoughts and understand why i have bdp.

[@SimpleCrazyBOCs]

great video

[@mattstorie5358]

Top author 😄

[@begily]

After 25 it just goes downhill??? In what respect? I am 31 now, and I have also been working within an MBT team, and I genuinely feel that my mentalizing has definitely improved over the last year or so. Not massively of course, but I feel a couple degrees more of a mentalizer than I used to be. If that were true then therapy would be useless no???

[@zoec4972]

'mirroring' isn't that straight outta hegel's 'lord and bondsman' dialectic?

[@ruthkassler5784]

interesting - a new term but seems as old as any ancient insight and wisdom

[@Sepantamino]

if love through arousal have negative effect on mentalizing then when the arousal is limited then the empathy should boost it instead. What about compassion?

[@kaleb7299]

From about three months on, and this is a subjective interpretation one would assume? If one profits from an interest, does it make it propaganda/marketing to promote those interests without having first evidenced the opinions one basis one's conjecture upon. Listen to me, I'm right, how are you right, oh because I say I'm right! Proof of claim helps in the modern world?

[@phamth]

SOWK 644

[@carlalee5475]

Rip Marilyn Monroe

[@zoec4972]

on international womans day we should remember all the women, 'hysterics' and the hollywood stars, marilyn, judy and francis farmer who have been brought down by research based 'science '/neo- eugenic doctoring.

[@Grassisgreenism]

I find it quite disturbing how he states his theories as fact. Of course there is a long tradition within psychoanalysis of treating hypothesis, conjecture, and "just so stories" as irrevocable truths.