The Storytelling Aspect of Interpersonal Relations: Understanding "Relating" from a Mentalization Point of View.
Improving a patient's ability to form and maintain satisfactory interpersonal relations is an important goal in many therapies. A mentalization-based approach to treatment is ideally suited to achieve this end to the extent it's designed to help improve a patient's ability to form more nuanced guesses about why others act as they do, based on a more accurate "read" of that individual's beliefs and desires. Interpersonal difficulties often issue when patients remain insistent on their own interpretation of another's motives that fly in the face of that individual's understanding of what is "driving" them. Helping patients explore the basis upon which they'd formed their conclusions about others goes a ways toward opening their mind to the possibility that things are a bit more complicated than first imaged. This in turn leads to greater curiosity and willingness to explore their own narratives and perceptions.
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Training and Supervising Analyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis.
J Mark
JM
Thompson
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Training and Supervising Analyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis.
Richard
R
Tuch
D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D033262:Narration; D011613:Psychotherapy
conjoint treatment; interpersonal relations; mentalization; narrative psychology; psychotherapy