The ability to think about what might be in other people’s minds (the skill of putting ourselves in another person’s experience) is something the Hungarian-born psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy calls ‘mentalization.’ Simply put, Fonagy describes mentalization as “having one’s mind in mind.”
Flora Lazar, PhD LCSW
Psychoanalysis, Self and Context
Volume 15, 2020 – Issue 2
Flora Lazar discusses what self psychology can learn from the field of literary criticism about addressing the experience of political and social otherness. Using the debates arising from the 2017 Brisbane Literary Festival, it explores how social, political, and cultural identities might affect our ability to understand the lives of those whose identities we do not share.
