Peter Fonagy > 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]

“attachment relationship between infant and caregiver is itself an affective bond.”
― 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]

“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]

“The primacy of cognition over affect was a cornerstone of the theoretical framework that organized the work of early cognitive behavioral therapists”
― 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]

“mental agency may be more usefully seen as a developing or constructed capacity.”
― 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]

“Mentalization—a concept that is familiar in developmental circles—is the process by which we realize that having a mind mediates our experience of the”
― 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]

“Insecurity in attachment relationships is a signal of limitation in mentalizing skills. We find that the traditional classification of attachment patterns may be helpfully reinterpreted in this context as indication of a relatively good (secure attachment), or relatively poor (insecure attachment) capacity to manage or cope with intimate interpersonal relationships. An absence of mentalizing capacity under stress is signaled by the disorganization of the attachment system.”
― 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 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]

“provides empirical support for the notion that an infant’s sense of self emerges from the affective quality of relationship with the primary caregiver.”
― 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]

“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]

“affects ought to be studied in their own right, and that they constitute an independent sphere of knowledge—distinct from perception, cognition, and memory. According to Tomkins, affects are primary biological motivating mechanisms and can, thus, be understood as having primacy in human agency.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“According to Damasio, the core self is the foundation of consciousness, and the autobiographical self is its glory”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“In conclusion, the neuroscientific accounts of LeDoux and Damasio deepen the Spinozistic insight that we are embodied minds.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“elaborated the notion of procedural memories based on the nonconscious implicit use of past experience”
― 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]

“Exploring the meaning of others’ actions is then a precursor of children’s ability to label and find meaningful their own psychological experiences. This ability arguably underlies the capacities for affect regulation, impulse control, self-monitoring, and the experience of self-agency—the building blocks of the organization of the self.”
― Peter Fonagy, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self [eBook]

“1 Attachment and Reflective Function: Their Role in Self-Organization”
― 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]

“We argue that it is the manner in which the environment is experienced that acts as a filter in the expression of genotype into phenotype. The intrapsychic representational processes that underpin the agentive self are not just the consequences of both environmental and genetic effects. They may acquire additional importance as moderators of the effects of the environment upon the unfolding of genotype into phenotype. We place mentalization at the heart of this process of moderation, since it is the interpretation of the social environment rather than the physical environment that governs genetic expression.”
― 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]

“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]

“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]

“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]