UCL Discovery Stage
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery Stage

Beyond Mentalizing: Epistemic Trust and the Transmission of Culture

Fonagy, Peter; Allison, Elizabeth; (2023) Beyond Mentalizing: Epistemic Trust and the Transmission of Culture. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly , 92 (4) pp. 599-640. 10.1080/00332828.2023.2290023. Green open access

[thumbnail of Fonagy_Beyond Mentalizing  Epistemic Trust and the Transmission of Culture.pdf]
Preview
Text
Fonagy_Beyond Mentalizing Epistemic Trust and the Transmission of Culture.pdf

Download (834kB) | Preview

Abstract

We explore the interpersonal origins of human culture, arguing that culture emerges as a necessary consequence of our helplessness in infancy, which in turn requires a greater degree of collaboration and social organization than is necessary for other mammals. We propose a model of cultural transmission that depends on a dyadic interpersonal process whose vicissitudes can have a lifelong impact. We explore the role played by imagining subjectively experienced psychological states and processes in others, which we have defined as mentalizing, in the process of cultural transmission, and propose that mentalizing is key to the establishment of epistemic trust—that is to say, an experience of trust that enables the individual to absorb and use the knowledge they are being offered. We suggest that psychoanalysis can be viewed as a paradigmatic example of a process of transferring knowledge from one human being (the teacher, the caregiver, the analyst) to another (the learner, the young person, the patient) and argue that the mechanisms of psychic change in analysis cannot be fully understood without appreciating this aspect of the biological/evolutionary origins of our essential humanity. Finally, we discuss the clinical implications of the model we are proposing for the psychoanalytic process.

Type: Article
Title: Beyond Mentalizing: Epistemic Trust and the Transmission of Culture
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/00332828.2023.2290023
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1080/00332828.2023.2290023
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: Mentalization, culture, evolutionary theory, natural pedagogy, communication, mechanisms of therapeutic change.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10182560
Downloads since deposit
2,739Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item