Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self

Edouard Manet, Olympus, 1982

by Peter Fonagy, Gyorgy Gergely, Elliot Jurist, Mary Target, New York, Other Press, 2004, p. 576.

This amazing book fuses developmental psychology and psychoanalytic theory in an exciting definition of attachment theory: attachment is not an end in itself.  It produces a representational system of psychological states.  Mentalization is the process by which we understand that having a mind mediates our experience of the world.  Mentalization (or the Reflective Function) is how we know ourselves--through a gradually elaborated inner organization--and others. The stakes are higher here for psychoanalytic thinkers: one can only develop a self with the intentional mind states via the hard-won acquisitions in the attachment stage. 

The understanding of the "I" is the understanding of complex internal structures.  The attachment stage, in this way, is a life-long process.  The understanding of the "I" (our internal processes are so opaque!) as a mental agent grows out of interpersonal experience.  The baby's understanding of herself as a physical organism with a mind is not a genetic given; its a constructed capacity.  To reiterate, self-reflection and the capacity to reflect on other minds are constructed capacities that evolved out of early experiences.

The building blocks of the organization of the self are affect regulation, impulse control, self-monitoring, and the experience of self-agency.

Affect regulation is the modulation of emotional states but it can also be used to develop the self.  (Internal states that are not mirrored back to the enfant by the caregiver adequately undermine appropriate labeling.  These emotions remain confused, experienced as unsymbolized, and hard to regulate.  This may lead to the child equating internal experience with external reality.  The child may feel that emotions inevitably spill out into the world)  Fonagy et al. introduce the concept of "mentalized affectivity" which marks the mature capacity to regulate feelings and discover the subjective meaning of one's own feelings. 

Mentalized affectivity stands at the core of the therapeutic process.  It announces the gap between internal experience and external reality.  Healing can come from processing shame (or other troubling emotions) via mentalization.  Individuals come to conceive of new narratives that explain the behavior of others or themselves.  Mentalization is a creative process that engenders new narratives, alternative interpretations and differing perspectives. 

The relationship between analyst and patient recapitulates the dynamics at the attachment stage.  Fonagy describes his working method as the constant availability and active offering of the analyst's mind so that within it, the client may discover her own self.  An analyst enters into the mental world of the client and only gradually show him through contact with his mental experience, that it is a series of representations that can be played with, shared, and changed.

This book won a ton of awards.  Its the most important book I've read on self-modulation and internal growth.  I chose Manet's Olympia as the illustration for this book because she is such a proud and self-aware subject!