Luyten, P; De Meulemeester, C; Fonagy, P; (2020) The self–other distinction in psychopathology: Recent developments from a mentalizing perspective. In: Ochsner, K and Gilead, M, (eds.) The Neural Bases of Mentalizing. Springer (In press).

Text Luyten_aOchsner_Gilead_Neural_Bases_mentalizing_Self other distinction in psychopathology_accepted.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff Download (543kB)

Abstract

The mentalizing approach to the development and treatment of psychopathology has gained momentum in recent years. Mentalizing (or reflective functioning) refers to the human capacity to understand oneself and others in terms of internal mental states, and plays a key role in our capacity to navigate our complex and essentially interpersonal world. Temporary or chronic impairments in mentalizing have been identified in a wide array of psychiatric disorder, with different types of mental disorder being associated with different types of imbalances between various dimensions of mentalizing. Borderline personality disorder (BPD), for instance, is characterized by the rapid loss of controlled mentalizing in high-arousal contexts, leading to overreliance on fast, automatic, and biased mentalizing. As a result, these individuals show a tendency to conflate the mental states of self and others (also known as identify diffusion). Here, we summarize our emerging knowledge concerning the neural circuits underlying the self–other distinction, with a focus on impairments in self-other distinction in BPD. Implications for both basic research and intervention research are discussed.

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