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Article

With You and Me in Mind: Mentalization and Transactional Analysis

Pages 230-240
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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In their 2004 article, J. R. Allen, Bennett, and Kearns invited us to carry on their exploration of “thinking psychologically.” In this article, the author does so by offering further reflections about mentalization, a quality that psychotherapists seek to develop in most of their patients. The article explores meanings of this term, sums up current hypotheses about the way it develops, and draws parallels with some transactional analysis concepts. Material from the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942/1988) is used to illustrate the impact of impaired mentalizing.

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Laurie Hawkes

Laurie Hawkes, M.S., is a clinical psychologist, a Teaching Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy), and a Certified Transactional Analyst trainer. She works in private practice as a psychotherapist in Paris, France, and teaches in the Ecole d'Analyse Transactionnelle de Paris-Ile de France, champ psychothérapie (Paris school of TA in psychotherapy). She can be reached at 89 rue de l'Ourcq, bâtiment C2, 75019 Paris, France; e-mail: . The author wishes to thank those generous anglophones who helped with her “Frenglish”: Jo Stuthridge, Steff Oates, Lise Small, and Robin Fryer (in chronological order). Translated and republished with the permission of the author and the Editions d'Analyse Transactionelle (France). First published in the journal Actualités en Analyse Transactionnelle, N°134, April 2010, pp. 24–41, with the title “Une pensée qui contient: A.T. et mentalisation” (Copyright Ed. d'AT).