Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self Quotes

“As we have described, Dennett (1987) theorized that humans have evolved a mentalistic interpretational system that he calls the “intentional stance,” whose function is efficiently to predict and explain other people’s actions by inferring and attributing causal intentional mind states (such as beliefs, intentions, and desires) to them. This system implies an understanding that behavior can be caused by representational mental states that can be either true or false in relation to actual reality. Since intentional mind states (such as beliefs) are not directly visible, they need to be inferred from a variety of behavioral and situational cues that the interpreter needs to monitor constantly. The ability to mentalize, which can be seen as the central mechanism of “social (or mental) reality testing,” is therefore a developmental achievement that unfolds through the gradual sensitization to and learning about the mental significance of relevant expressive, behavioral, verbal, and situational cues that indicate the presence of mind states in persons.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“The unchallenged maintenance of a bond is experienced as a source of security and the renewal of a bond as a source of”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“attachment relationship between infant and caregiver is itself an affective bond.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“We believe that the caregiver’s capacity to observe the moment-to-moment changes in the child’s mental state is critical in the development of mentalizing capacity. The caregiver’s perception of the child as an intentional being lies at the root of sensitive caregiving, which attachment theorists view as the cornerstone of secure attachment (Ainsworth et al. 1978; Bates, Maslin, and Frankel 1985; Belsky and Isabella 1988; Egeland and Farber 1984; Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler, Suess, and Unzner 1985; Isabella 1993; Isabella and Belsky 1991). Secure attachment, in its turn, provides the psychosocial basis for acquiring an understanding of mind. The secure infant feels safe in making attributions of mental states to account for the behavior of the caregiver. In contrast the avoidant child shuns to some degree the mental state of the other, while the resistant child focuses on its own state of distress, to the exclusion of close intersubjective exchanges. Disorganized infants may represent a special category: hypervigilant of the caregiver’s behavior, they use all cues available for prediction; they may be acutely sensitized to intentional states and thus may be more ready to construct a mentalized account of the caregiver’s behavior. We would argue (see below) that in such children mentalization may be evident, but it does not have the central role in self-organization that characterizes securely attached children. We believe that what is most important for the development of mentalizing self-organization is the exploration of the mental state of the sensitive caregiver, which enables the child to find in the caregiver’s mind (that is, in the hypothetical representation of her mind that he constructs to explain her behavior toward him) an image of himself as motivated by beliefs, feelings, and intentions. In contrast, what the disorganized child is scanning for so intently is not the representation of his own mental states in the mind of the other, but the mental states of that other that threaten to undermine his own self.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“The term “reflective function” (RF) refers to the operationalization of the psychological processes underlying the capacity to mentalize—”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Developmentalists over the past ten years have drawn our attention to the near-universal and remarkable capacity of young children to interpret their own and others’ behavior by attributing mental states (see Chapters 3 and 4). Reflective function, referred to in developmental psychology as “theory of mind,” is the developmental acquisition that permits children to respond not only to another person’s behavior, but to the children’s conception of others’ beliefs, feelings, attitudes, desires, hopes, knowledge, imagination, pretense, deceit, intentions, plans, and so on. Reflective function, or mentalization, enables children to “read” other people’s minds”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Psychotherapy with individuals whose early experiences have led to a compromised mentalizing capacity should be focused on helping them to build this interpersonal interpretive capacity.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“we might say that the self as agent arises out of the infant’s perception of his presumed intentionality in the mind of the caregiver. Where parental caregiving is extremely insensitive and misattuned, we assume that a fault is created in the construction of the psychological self.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“We suggest that children whose parents provide more affect-congruent contingent, and appropriately marked, mirroring displays facilitate this decoupling. In contrast, the displays of parents who, because of their own difficulties with emotion regulation, are readily overwhelmed by the infant’s negative affect and produce a realistic unmarked emotion expression disrupt the development of affect regulation.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Insecurity in attachment relationships is a signal of limitation in mentalizing skills.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Mentalization is intrinsically linked to the development of the self, to its gradually elaborated inner organization, and to its participation in human society, a network of human relationships with other beings who share this unique capacity. We have used the term “reflective function” to refer to our operationalization of the mental capacities that generate mentalization (Fonagy, Target, Steele, and Steele 1998).”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“borderline individuals are specifically characterized by a fearful and preoccupied attachment style reflecting “an emotional template of intimacy anxiety/anger”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“it has been suggested that the borderline person’s experiences of interpersonal attack, neglect, and threats of abandonment may account for a perception of current relationships as attacking and neglectful”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“The capacity for interpretation in psychological terms—let us call this the “Interpersonal Interpretive Mechanism,” or IIM—is not just a generator or mediator of attachment experience; it is also a product of the complex psychological processes engendered by close proximity in infancy to another human being—the primary object or attachment figure.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“The review by Swanson and colleagues (Swanson et al. 2000) confirmed the likely role of the 7-repeat allele of this gene in making the postsynaptic receptor subsensitive, thus possibly reducing the efficiency of neural circuits for behavior inhibition. Comings et al. (1999) report findings related to impulsive, compulsive, addictive behaviors that indicate a greater complexity than does a sole focus on the 7- versus non-7 alleles of the DRD4 gene. In view of recent findings, which have linked disorganized attachment in infancy to clinical conditions in middle childhood, it may be particularly important that in this study 71% of the infants classified as disorganized were found to have at least one 7-repeat allele, in contrast with only 29% of the nondisorganized group. Thus infants classified as disorganized were more than four times more likely to be carrying this allele.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“workers found an association between the DRD4 receptor III exon polymorphism and disorganized attachment classification in 12-month-old infants. Over the years, considerable evidence has linked behavioral problems in both children and adults with the 7-repeat allele of the DRD4 gene. In particular, ADHD has been implicated”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“The A1 allele is probably a marker for low dopamine transporter binding, which predicts, among other things, a detached personality in healthy subjects (Laakso et al. 2000), vulnerability to relapse in alcoholics (Guardia et al. 2000), and social phobia (Schneier et al. 2000). It is at least possible to argue that the D2 alleles provide a marker for a certain kind of interpersonal vulnerability. In our sample, the A1 allele was, in the absence of trauma, coupled with significant elevation of personality dysfunction, but dysfunction associated with trauma was evident in the presence of trauma.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“interaction. It is, however, consistent with the mixed evidence that sometimes (but not invariably) links DRD2*A1 with susceptibility to trauma (Comings”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“The maternal style of high-reactive females raised by nurturant mothers reflected the style of their nurturant foster-mothers rather than their own temperament. Thus the benefits of nurturant foster-mothering can evidently be transmitted to the next generation, even though the mode of transmission is nongenetic in nature”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Rhesus monkeys (Suomi 2000) that individuals who carry the “short” allele of the 5-HTT gene are significantly more severely affected by maternal deprivation than are individuals with the “long” allele”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Perhaps more relevant to us from an attachment standpoint are the classic studies of rat pups separated from their mother in the first two weeks of life, who appear to incur a permanent increase in the expression of genes controlling the secretion of CRF (corticotrophin-releasing factor)”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“(a) early attachment experiences may well be key moderators of the expression of individual genotype, and (b) the primary evolutionary function of attachment may indeed be the contribution it makes to the ontogenetic creation of a mental mechanism that could serve to moderate psychosocial experiences relevant for gene expression.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“The quality of the environments that are thought to be so important to development, including stress, life events, and trauma (and probably also maternal attunement and sensitivity), can all be inherited. It is likely that personality characteristics that we had often thought of as—and what the child might experience as—the consequence of the parents’ behavior toward the child are in fact genetic predispositions.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“data became available from research that gave equal weight to both genetic and social influences on development.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“experience with parents as pivotal in shaping an individual’s values, beliefs, character, and, naturally, dysfunctions in adaptation.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Don’t ask what causes my problems, don’t probe my memories or thoughts or feelings; there is nothing to know, the answer lies in my genes. There was no room for human mystery! This inability to envision psychological and psychosocial causation is both at the root of the psychological problems these individuals brought into the consulting-room and at the core of the naive nativist perspective.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“Disorganization of attachment may be the indication of exceptionally poor mentalization.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“during the second half of the first year, “regulation of arousal and emotion no longer depend simply on what the caregiver does, but on how the infant interprets the caregiver’s accessibility and behavior”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“In attachment theory, the regulation of affects serves to foster the emergence of self-regulation from coregulation. Or, put into the alternative language that Sroufe uses, this means that the regulatory system of the infant is transformed from being “dyadic” to being “individual.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“. For example, Bowlby asserts that Many of the most intense emotions arise during the formation, the maintenance, the disruption and the renewal of attachment relationships. The formation of a bond is described as falling in love, maintaining a bond as loving someone, and losing a partner as grieving over someone. Similarly, threat of loss arouses anxiety and actual loss gives rise to sorrow; while each of these situations is likely to arouse anger. The unchallenged maintenance of a bond is experienced as a source of security and the renewal of a bond as a source of joy. [1980, p. 40]”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]