Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the different aspects of the theory of mind and autism. Difficulty in understanding other minds is a core cognitive feature of autism spectrum conditions. It is found that normal 3- to 4-year-olds already know that the brain has a set of mental functions, such as dreaming, wanting, thinking, and keeping secrets. In contrast, children with autism appear to know about the physical functions, but typically fail to mention any mental function of the brain. Children with autism, when studied under experimental conditions, have been shown to have difficulties both in the production of deception and in understanding when someone else is deceiving them. People with autism-spectrum conditions are clearly having mentalizing difficulties for reasons different from those seen in people with learning difficulties or those who are blind or deaf, since a deficit can be revealed even in the highest functioning individuals with an autism-spectrum condition in whom general comprehension problems can be ruled out.

Abstract: The author outlines his concept of reflective function or mentalization, which is defined as the capacity to think about mental states in oneself and in others. He presents evidence to suggest that the capacity for reflective awareness in a child's caregiver increases the likelihood of the child's secure attachment, which in turn facilitates the development of mentalization in the child. He proposes that a secure attachment relationship offers the child a chance to explore the mind of the caregiver, and in this way to learn about minds; he formulates this model of the birth of the psychological self as a variation on the Cartesian cogito: "My caregiver thinks of me as thinking and therefore I exist as a thinker." This model is then applied to provide insight into some personality-disordered individuals who were victims of childhood abuse. The author proposes (1) that individuals who experience early trauma may defensively inhibit their capacity to mentalize to avoid having to think about their caregiver's wish to harm them; and (2) that some characteristics of severe borderline personality disorder may be rooted in developmental pathology associated with this inhibition. He offers evidence for and some qualifications of this model, and argues that the therapeutic effect of psychoanalysis depends on its capacity to activate patients' ability to evolve an awareness of mental states and thus find meaning in their own and other people's behavior.

Abstract: Little research into children’s theory of mind has focused on links with social deficits, with exception of research into the rare condition of autism. However, other studies have analysed theory of mind ability in less severe and less rare social deficits, such as children with conduct disorders or bullying at school. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how social experiences within the peer system are linked to understanding of mind, adopting a sociocultural view of theory of mind development. Peer-rejected children, 4–6 years old, lacking positive social experiences with their peers, are compared with popular and average children in theory of mind tasks performance. Results showed that peer-rejected children presented a similar performance to average children in all theory of mind tasks, with the exception of some figurative language tasks (White Lie), and the presence of socio cognitive aggressive biases. It cannot be said from these results that peer rejected children showed a deficit in the ability of mentalizing. However, a kind of theory of ‘nasty minds’ may be present in these rejected children.

Abstract: Verbal Elaboration of Affect (VEA) is an aspect of mentalization that refers to the transformation of drive-affect experiences. The GEVA (Grille de l'Elaboration Verbale de l'Affect), measures the formal properties of VEA, defined as levels of affect elaboration according to two dimensions: (1) four channels of verbal expression: somatic and motor activity, imagery, and labeling verbalization; (2) five levels of affect tolerance/abstraction: disruptive impulsion, modulated impulsion, externalization, appropriation, and meaning association. The GEVA and the Defense Mechanisms Rating Scales are applied to transcripts of a 14-session prematurely terminated psychotherapy. The patient demonstrated an increase in mental elaboration of her negative affects across the sessions. A closer examination, however, reveals that she became less spontaneous and more externalizing, while increasingly adopting the verbal channel. She was also increasingly disavowing in her defensive functioning and spoke less frequently of ...

Abstract: Abstract Ordinary people are mentalizers. The folk not only have mental states, but they represent themselves — both self and others — as having mental states. Many of these mental states (e.g., beliefs and desires) represent how the world is or ought to be. By representing themselves as having such first-order representational states, the folk engage in second-order representation, or metarepresentation. The class of representations is not exhausted, of course, by mental states; linguistic utterances and inscriptions are also representations though not mental ones. The representation of mental representation is a big enough topic for a single chapter, however, and it is all that I shall bite off here.

Abstract: Conduct disorders in the adolescent constitute a syndrome accompanied by disturbances in intra-familial transactions. These disorders have been preceded by warning signs in childhood. The inability to interpret social clues often observed in childhood is joined with insecure modes of attachment. Fonagy shows the importance of the disorganized form of attachment in the past of these adolescents and establishes a connection between this disorganization and the parents’ forms of attachment. Dysfunctional interrelations hamper the development of mentalization or reflexive function (theory of mind). The capacity for attributing intent is an organizing factor of the Self, which depends on the degree of security of the attachment. The lack of it can result from coercive interactive styles, from the parent’s indifference, or from a confrontation with intolerable situations. It leads to difficulty in recognizing oneself as the author of one’s own acts and is conducive to defences involving the projection of parts oneself into exterior objects. The aggressiveness of adolescents with conduct disorders can be attributed to the loss of a sense of responsibility for the action and to the inability to feel what a victim is experiencing. To these factors of violence Fonagy adds adolescents’ attack upon parts of oneself externalized in the other. Conduct disorders arise in adolescence because this is the time when the adolescent is confronted with the inevitable change of attachment objects while his disorganized mode of attachment and the deficiencies in his mentalization do not allow him this mutation. In addition, the new objects encountered by adolescents do not tolerate the modes of externalization of parts of oneself that they used in the past with their parents.

Abstract: AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT: Interest in psychological factors of obesity has been clearly on the decline over the last thirty years Despite this fact, the psychological approach to obese subjects is a fundamental element both in understanding the causal mechanisms but also to follow therapeutic effects in the long run However, everything cannot be explained by the fact that many nutritionists lack a formation in psychology and many psychiatrists lack interest for corporal diseases What is missing is a theoretical background allowing each participant to find his/her role in this multifactorial condition which requires a multidisciplinary management COLLABORATIVE CARE: The nutritionist-psychiatrist pair would appear to be the best choice for a large number of obese subjects who may or may not have eating habit disorders The type of psychological help will depend on many factors: the subject's background, environment, demands, and most importantly, capacity for mentalization There are many possibilities for simple supportive care: psychoanalytic approach, behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, etc The choice of a therapeutic method depends on the clinician's competence and on the subject's characteristics An emphatic active attitude is indispensable for those patients whose demand for psychological help is often buried in the somatic condition

Abstract: In their review article “Interacting minds—A biological basis,” Chris Frith and Uta Frith postulate that so-called “mind-blindness,” an inability to conceive others' mental states (or “mentalize”), is a central feature of both autism and schizophrenia and, as such, is associated with

Abstract: The relationship between attachment, peer relations and mentalising was explored in a study of 70 early adolescents. Two different measures of attachment were used, the Middle Childhood Attachment Interview and the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment. Peer relationships were also investigated from a number of different perspectives using a self-report measure of friendship quality, peer ratings of popularity and teacher ratings of social skills with peers. This study found that security of attachment was related to some aspects of peer relations in adolescents but not others. As predicted, security of attachment was related to friendship quality. It is proposed that the adolescent's internal representation of the parent-child attachment relationship generalises to other close relationships. Security of attachment was not related to peer-rated popularity or teacher ratings of peer problems, but it was associated with teacher-rated prosocial behaviour. The quality of the parent-child attachment may therefore also influence some aspects of general social skills in this age group. Alternative explanations are discussed. Mentalising ability was not found to be related to peer relationships. There was an association between attachment, mentalising and verbal ability but mentalising did not make an independent contribution to the association. The measurement of mentalising ability in older children is discussed with suggestions for future research.

Abstract: Margaret Mahler's seminal work on the psychological birth of the infant has generated more critical discussion than most other psychoanalytic theories of early development. But while the empirically, theoretically, and methodologically based criticisms of Mahler's theory are generally justified, her critics fail at times to consider some of the intriguing and creative insights that her theoretical formulations tried to capture. This paper attempts to reformulate these insights using the new conceptual tools that current cognitive developmental theory provides. Mahler's stage of normal autism is reconsidered in the light of contingency detection theory as an initial phase of primary preoccupation with self-generated perfectly response-contingent stimulation. Her concept of normal symbiosis is recast with the help of attachment theory's views on homeostatic regulation and the social biofeedback model of affect-reflective mirroring interactions with parents. Finally, her ideas about the development of splitting and libidinal object constancy are reconsidered according to recent theories of early representational development and mentalization.

Abstract: Details are given of a new advanced theory of mind task, developed to approximate the demands of real-life mentalizing in able individuals with autism. Excerpts of films showing characters in social situations were presented, with participants required to answer questions on characters' mental states and on control, nonsocial questions. When compared with control participants, adults with high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome were most impaired in their ability to answer the questions requiring mind-reading ability. Although the present findings have implications for task modification, such naturalistic, dynamic stimuli are held to offer an important means of studying subtle difficulties in mentalistic understanding.