The Ability to Mentalize

The ability to mentalize starts very early in our first two years of life. Children signal their internal states to their mother or their father, whoever their caregiver is and that caregiver reflects back what they think the child is feeling so the child's uncomfortable. The parent might go, you're uncomfortable. They might squinch their face or do something that indicates to the child they get it. But there's a second part that they do that's just as crucial besides reflecting back the child's internal states. This is when the parent says, I know what you're feeling, but I'm not. And so they get it totally wrong and we have cultural disasters as a result.