A Fluctuating Capacity to Mentalize: Affect Scripts and Self-State Systems as (not so) “Strange Attractors”: A Discussion of Margy Sperry's “Putting our Heads Together: Mentalizing Systems”

Abstract

Margy Sperry identified the potential for interpersonal and intersubjective dimensions of experience to explain observed fluctuations of a capacity for mentalization and reflective function, and she illustrated this with a pertinent case that contained an enactment. Additional exploration of her premise and the case reveals the potential to understand some aspects of a more universal fluctuating capacity for mentalization as a function of unconscious or implicit affect scripts (in this case, containing shame) as well as the related naturalistic shifting of self-states in a clinical dyad. Persistent childhood styles of thinking such as psychic equivalence, pretend, and teleological modes (Fonagy et al., 2003) may predict some fluctuation as the capacity for mentalization is achieved. Additional factors to consider might also be shifting self-states and activation of related toxic affects and the secondary protective modes of behavior that help to create the safety of distance in the context of deep narcissistic wounding (Lansky, 1992) and fears of annihilation (Hurvich, 2003;Kohut, 1971) in both patient and therapist.