Mentalization

I recently had the pleasure of attending a workshop about some of the psychological elements in mediation, by Dr. Ilene Diamond, and sponsored by Community Boards.

This presentation was fascinating for me. One of the main ideas that we discussed was "mentalization," which denotes a person's ability to understand the mental state of another without overt verbal explanation. This includes the ability to feel empathy towards someone else, and the ability to understand a situation from another's perspective.

When a person has poor mentalization skills, it is very difficult for them to participate collaboratively in a mediation. They are unable to compromise, since they are unable to see the relevant issues from anyone's point of view but their own. Moreover, they have a sense that they will be "losing" if they make any concessions.

But the most interesting part of mentalization revolved around the formation of this skill set, which starts extremely early in life. In infancy, we learn from our parents that it's possible to intuit how someone else is feeling - they anticipate our needs, look after us, and connect with us before we can verbalize our needs. From them, we learn that we can relate to other people in this way. Sadly, babies whose parents are less attentive, or perhaps negligent, never learn these skills. While they can be taught later in life, the foundation is laid in infancy. Amazing.

So how to work with a party who has poor mentalization skills? Often, the best approach is to cast the relevant issue in selfish terms, i.e., "If you let this person have this one thing, it really is better for you because...." If the poor mentalizer can see self-interest in a decision, it will be more compelling for them.