Notes
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Dr Sue Verheyden.
‘Mentalization’ is a reflective mode in which thoughts and feelings can be experienced as representations. It enables inner and outer reality to be experienced as linked but separate. ‘Mentalization is the conscious or unconscious recognition that the other's actions are understandable given their mental states. The concurrent related recognition that one is oneself understood by the other in this way serves to affirm to oneself one's existence as a mental entity’ (Fonagy and Target 2002:11).