RESEARCH PAPER
Fluctuations of mentalization in the context of relational stimuli and representational contents
Submission date: 2017-09-26
Final revision date: 2018-09-12
Acceptance date: 2018-09-13
Online publication date: 2018-12-19
Publication date: 2018-12-17
Current Issues in Personality Psychology 2018;6(4):279-291
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
the role of personality in interpersonal relations and social behaviorsindividual differencespersonality disorders
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mentalization as the ability to interpret human behavior in terms of mental states is not a stable characteristic but is subject to fluctuation depending on the context. Nonlinear system theories explain the fluctuation of mentalization by stressing the context of the relationship in which there emerges a new quality of mentalization and/or activation of elements of the internal system of representations.
Participants and procedure:
The aim of the study was to test whether the fluctuation of mentalization depends on the type of relational stimulus (imagining the responsiveness/unresponsiveness of a significant other) or on the interaction of the stimulus with the content aspects of representation (a predominance of relatedness/sociotropy or a predominance of self-definition/autonomy). The investigators collected the utterances of 49 students about a situation involving a significant other, which was preceded by a request to imagine that this person was responsive (Condition 1) or unresponsive (Condition 2). The level of mentalization was assessed by means of the Metacognition Assessment Scale. The investigators divided the group into two subgroups with different configurations of representational contents (a predominance of relatedness/sociotropy or self-definition/autonomy) based on the scores in the Personal Style Inventory.
Results:
Mentalization fluctuations dependent on the interaction of the stimulus and representational contents were observed in the group with a predominance of sociotropic contents for interpersonal mentalization but not for self-reflective mentalizing.
Conclusions:
Mentalization must not be decontextualized; however, it is not the stimulus alone but the interaction of the stimulus with representational content that determines the fluctuations of mentalization. Individuals with a predominance of relatedness experience a decline in the capacity for interpersonal mentalization after imagining a significant other’s unresponsiveness, which can be interpreted as resulting from a weakening of the function of differentiating.
Mentalization as the ability to interpret human behavior in terms of mental states is not a stable characteristic but is subject to fluctuation depending on the context. Nonlinear system theories explain the fluctuation of mentalization by stressing the context of the relationship in which there emerges a new quality of mentalization and/or activation of elements of the internal system of representations.
Participants and procedure:
The aim of the study was to test whether the fluctuation of mentalization depends on the type of relational stimulus (imagining the responsiveness/unresponsiveness of a significant other) or on the interaction of the stimulus with the content aspects of representation (a predominance of relatedness/sociotropy or a predominance of self-definition/autonomy). The investigators collected the utterances of 49 students about a situation involving a significant other, which was preceded by a request to imagine that this person was responsive (Condition 1) or unresponsive (Condition 2). The level of mentalization was assessed by means of the Metacognition Assessment Scale. The investigators divided the group into two subgroups with different configurations of representational contents (a predominance of relatedness/sociotropy or self-definition/autonomy) based on the scores in the Personal Style Inventory.
Results:
Mentalization fluctuations dependent on the interaction of the stimulus and representational contents were observed in the group with a predominance of sociotropic contents for interpersonal mentalization but not for self-reflective mentalizing.
Conclusions:
Mentalization must not be decontextualized; however, it is not the stimulus alone but the interaction of the stimulus with representational content that determines the fluctuations of mentalization. Individuals with a predominance of relatedness experience a decline in the capacity for interpersonal mentalization after imagining a significant other’s unresponsiveness, which can be interpreted as resulting from a weakening of the function of differentiating.
REFERENCES (66)
1.
Allen, J. G., Fonagy, P., & Bateman, A. W. (2008). Mentalizing in clinical practice. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
2.
Baldwin, M. W., Keelan, J. P. R., Fehr, B., Enns, V., & Koh-Rangarajoo, E. (1996). Social cognitive conceptualization of attachment styles: Availability and accessibility effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 94–109.
3.
Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A four category model of attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 226−241.
4.
Beck, A. T. (1983). Cognitive therapy of depression: New perspectives. In P. J. Clayton & J. E. Barrett (Eds.), Treatment of depression: Old controversies and new approaches (pp. 265−290). New York: Raven.
5.
Beck, J. S. (2005). Terapia poznawcza [Cognitive therapy]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.
6.
Beaulieu-Pelletier, G., Bouchard, M.-A., & Philippe, F. L. (2013). Mental States Task (MST): Development, validation, and correlates of a self-report measure of mentalization. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69, 671–695.
7.
Bergman, A., & Harpaz-Rotem, I. (2004). Revisiting rapprochement in the light of contemporary developmental theories. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 52, 555–570.
8.
Blatt, S. J. (2008). Polarities of experience: Relatedness and self-definition in personality development, psychopathology, and the therapeutic process. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.
9.
Bosmans, G., Van de Walle, M., Goossens, L., & Ceulemans, E. (2014). (In)variability of attachment in middle childhood: Secure base script evidence in diary data. Behaviour Change, 31, 225–242.
10.
Bouchard, M.-A., Target, M., Lecours, S., Fonagy, P., Tremblay, L.-M., Schachter, A., & Stein, H. (2008). Mentalization in adult attachment narratives: Reflective functioning, mental states, and affect elaboration compared. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 25, 47–66.
12.
Brown, W. G. (2008). Failure to mentalize: Defect or defense? Psychoanalytic Social Work, 15, 28–42.
13.
Caligor, E., & Clarkin, J. (2010). An object relations model of personality and personality pathology. In J. F. Clarkin, P. Fonagy, & G. O. Gabbard (Eds.), Psychodynamic psychotherapy for personality disorders: A clinical handbook (pp. 3–36). Washington, London: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.
14.
Carcione, A., Dimaggio, G., Conti, L., Fiore, D., Nicolò, G., & Semerari, A. (2010). Metacognition Assessment Scale v. 4.0. Unpublished manuscripts.
15.
Choi-Kain, L. W., & Gunderson, J. (2008). Mentalization: Ontogeny, assessment, and application in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 1127–1135.
16.
Cierpiałkowska, L. (2016). Współczesna psychoanaliza i jej znaczenie dla psychologii klinicznej [Contemporary psychoanalysis and its contribution to clinical psychology]. In L. Cierpiałkowska & H. Sęk.
18.
Cierpiałkowska, L., Górska, D., Soroko, E., & Marszał, M. (2017). Heterogeniczność osób o organizacji osobowości borderline a przetwarzanie emocjonalne bodźców relacyjnych [Heterogeneity of borderline personality organization and emotional processing of relational stimuli]. Unpublished manuscript, UAM Poznań.
19.
Chefetz, R. A. (2013). A fluctuating capacity to mentalize: Affect scripts and self-state systems as (not so) “strange attractors”: A discussion of Margy Sperry’s “Putting our heads together: Mentalizing systems”. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23, 708–714.
20.
Collins, T. J., & Gillath, O. (2012). Attachment, breakup strategies, and associated outcomes: The effects of security enhancement on the selection of breakup strategies. Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 210–222.
21.
Crowell, J. A., Treboux, D., & Waters, E. (2002). Stability of attachment representations: The transition to marriage. Developmental Psychology, 38, 467–479.
22.
Davila, J., & Sargent, E. (2003). The meaning of life (events) predicts changes in attachment security. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1383–1395.
23.
Dimaggio, G., Carcione, A., Nicolò, G., Conti, L., Fiore, D., Pedone, R., Popolo, R., Procacci, M., & Semerari, A. (2009). Impaired decentration in personality disorder: A series of single cases analysed with the metacognition assessment scale. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 16, 450–462.
24.
Dimaggio, G., & Lysaker, P. H. (2015). Metacognition and mentalizing in the psychotherapy of patients with psychosis and personality disorders. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 71, 117–124.
25.
Dimaggio, G., Nicolo, G., Fiore, D., Centenero, E., Semerari, A., Carcione, A., & Pedone, R. (2008). States of minds in narcissistic personality disorder: Three psychotherapies analyzed using the grid of problematic states. Psychotherapy Research: Journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, 18, 466–480.
26.
Fischer-Kern, M., Doering, S., Taubner, S., Hörz, S., Zimmermann, J., Rentrop, M., Schuster, P., Buchheim, P., & Buchheim, A. (2015). Transference-focused psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder: Change in reflective function. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 207, 173–174.
27.
Fonagy, P., Bateman, A., & Luyten, P. (2012). Introduction and overview. In A. Bateman & P. Fonagy (Eds.), Handbook of mentalizing in mental health practice (pp. 3–41). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.
28.
Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., Bateman, A., Gergely, G., Strathearn, L., Target, M., & Allison, E. (2010). Attachment and personality pathology. In J. F. Clarkin, P. Fonagy, & G. O. Gabbard (Eds.), Psychodynamic psychotherapy for personality disorders: A clinical handbook (pp. 37–88). Washington, London: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.
29.
Fonagy, P., & Luyten, P. (2009). A developmental, mentalization-based approach to the understanding and treatment of borderline personality disorder. Developmental Psychopathology, 21, 1355–1381.
30.
Fraley, R. (2002). Attachment stability from infancy to adulthood: Meta-analysis and dynamic modeling of developmental mechanisms. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 123–151.
31.
Fraley, R. C., Heffernan, M. E., Vicary, A. M., & Brumbaugh, C. C. (2011). The Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures questionnaire: A method for assessing attachment orientations across relationships. Psychological Assessment, 23, 615–625.
32.
Fraley, R., & Shaver, P. R. (2000). Adult romantic attachment: Theoretical developments, emerging controversies, and unanswered questions. Review of General Psychology, 4, 132–154.
33.
Gergely, G. (2000). Reapproaching Mahler: New perspectives on normal autism, symbiosis, splitting and libidinal object constancy from cognitive developmental theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 48, 1197–1228.
34.
Gillath, O., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Effects of attachment style and relationship context on selection among relational strategies. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 968–976.
35.
Goldenberg, H., & Goldenberg, I. (2008). Family therapy: An overview (7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Thompson Brooks.
36.
Górska D. (2015). Procesy mentalizacji podczas aktywacji systemu przywiązania w populacji osób bez zaburzeń [The mentalization processes in attachment system activation among the people without disorders]. Polskie Forum Psychologiczne, 20, 536–558.
37.
Górska, D., & Cierpiałkowska, L. (2016). Mentalizacja jako stan i jako cecha – perspektywa strukturalno-procesualna [Mentalization as a state and as a trait – the structural-processual perspective]. In L. Cierpiałkowska & D. Górska (Eds.), Mentalizacja z perspektywy rozwojowej i klinicznej [Mentalization from the developmental and clinical perspective] (pp. 13–41). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.
38.
Harris, A. (2013). Discussion: Putting our heads together: Mentalizing systems. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23, 700–707.
39.
Hörz-Sagstetter, S., Mertens, W., Isphording, S., Buchheim, A., & Taubner, S. (2015). Changes in reflective functioning during psychoanalytic psychotherapies. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 63, 481–509.
40.
Hunyady, O., Josephs, L., & Jost, J. T. (2008). Priming the primal scene: Betrayal trauma, narcissism, and attitudes toward sexual infidelity. Self and Identity, 7, 278–294. doi: 10.1080/15298860701620227.
41.
Kernberg, O. F. (2016). What is personality? Journal of Personality Disorders, 30, 145–156.
42.
Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Hazan, C. (1994). Attachment styles and close relationships: A four-year prospective study. Personal Relationships, 1, 123–142.
43.
Levy, K. N., Meehan, K. B., Kelly, K. M., Reynoso, J. S., Weber, M., Clarkin, J. F., & Kernberg, O. F. (2006). Change in attachment patterns and reflective function in a randomized control trial of transference-focused psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74, 1027–1040.
44.
Luyten, P., & Blatt, S. J. (2011). Integrating theory driven and empirically-derived models of personality development and psychopathology: A proposal for DSM-V. Clinical Psychology Review, 31, 52–68.
45.
Luyten, P., & Blatt, S. J. (2013). Interpersonal relatedness and self-definition in normal and disrupted personality development. American Psychologist, 68, 172–183.
46.
Luyten, P., & Blatt, S. J. (2016). A hierarchical multiple-level approach to the assessment of interpersonal relatedness and self-definition: Implications for research, clinical practice, and DSM planning. Journal of Personality Assessment, 98, 5–13.
47.
Luyten, P., & Fonagy, P. (2014). Mentalising in attachment contexts. In P. Holmes & S. Farnfield (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of attachment: Theory (pp. 107–126). Hove, UK: Routledge.
48.
Lysaker, P. H., Carcione, A., Dimaggio, G., Johannesen, J. K., Nicolò, G., Procacci, M., & Semerari, A. (2005). Metacognition amidst narratives of self and illness in schizophrenia: Associations with neurocognition, symptoms, insight and quality of life. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 112, 64–71.
49.
Mahler, M. S., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the human infant. New York: Basic Books.
50.
Marszał, M. (2015). Mentalizacja w kontekście przy-wiązania. Zdolność do rozumienia siebie i innych u osób z osobowością borderline [Mentalization in the context of attachment. The ability to understand self and others in people with borderline personality]. Warsaw: Difin.
51.
Marszał, M. (2016). Metody pomiaru zdolności do mentalizacji [Methods of measuring the ability to mentalize]. In L. Cierpiałkowska & D. Górska (Eds.), Mentalizacja z perspektywy rozwojowej i klinicznej [Mentalization from the developmental and clinical perspective] (pp. 161–181). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.
52.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2001). Attachment theory and intergroup bias: Evidence that priming the secure base schema attenuates negative reactions to out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 97–115.
53.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
54.
Overall, N. C., Fletcher, G. J. O., & Friesen, M. D. (2003). Mapping the intimate relationship mind: Comparisons between three models of attachment representations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1479–1493.
55.
Pervin, L. A. (2001). A dynamic systems approach to personality. European Psychologist, 6, 172–176. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1027//101....
56.
Pierce, T., & Lydon, J. E. (2001). Global and specific relational models in the experience of social interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 613–631.
57.
Robins, C. J., Ladd, J., Welkowitz, J., Blaney, P. H., Diaz, R., & Kutcher, G. (1994). The Personal Style Inventory: Preliminary validation studies of new measures of sociotropy and autonomy. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 16, 277–300.
58.
Rowe, A., & Carnelley, K. B. (2003) Attachment style differences in the processing of attachment-relevant information: Primed-style effects on recall, interpersonal expectations, and affect. Personal Relationships, 10, 59–75.
59.
Royzman, E. B., Cassidy, K. W., & Baron, J. (2003). “I know, you know”: Epistemic egocentrism in children and adults. Review of General Psychology, 7, 38–65.
60.
Rudden, M., Milrod, B., Target, M., Ackerman, S., & Graf, E. (2006). Reflective functioning in panic disorder patients: A pilot study. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 54, 1339–1343.
61.
Sharp, C., Pane, H., Ha, C., Venta, A., Patel, A. B., Sturek, J., & Fonagy, P. (2011). Theory of mind and emotion regulation difficulties in adolescents with borderline traits. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 50, 563–573.
62.
Sperry, M. (2013). Putting our heads together: Mentalizing systems. Psychoanalytic Dialoques, 23, 683–699.
63.
Sutin, A. R., & Gillath, O. (2009). Autobiographical memory phenomenology and content mediate attachment style and psychological distress. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 56, 351–364.
64.
Tyson, P. (2006). Boundary formation in children: Normality and pathology. In S. Akhtar (Ed.), Interpersonal boundaries: Variations and violations (pp. 15–28). Lanham: Jason Aronson.
65.
Varvin, S., & Rosenbaum, B. (2003). Extreme traumatisation: Strategies for mental survival. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 12, 5–16.
66.
Zhang, F., & Labouvie-Vief, G. (2004). Stability and fluctuation in adult attachment style over a 6-year period. Attachment & Human Development 6, 419–437.
Copyright: © Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
| eISSN: | 2353-561X |
| ISSN: | 2353-4192 |
We process personal data collected when visiting the website. The function of obtaining information about users and their behavior is carried out by voluntarily entered information in forms and saving cookies in end devices. Data, including cookies, are used to provide services, improve the user experience and to analyze the traffic in accordance with the Privacy policy. Data are also collected and processed by Google Analytics tool (more).
You can change cookies settings in your browser. Restricted use of cookies in the browser configuration may affect some functionalities of the website.
You can change cookies settings in your browser. Restricted use of cookies in the browser configuration may affect some functionalities of the website.
