Mentalisation

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of comprehending both personal and external psychological conditions
2. The capability to analyze and derive meaning from actions informed by emotional and cognitive insights
3. The process of recognizing and interpreting the thoughts and feelings of oneself and others

Etymology: "Mentalisation" is a plain formation: the adjective "mental," drawn from Latin "mentalis" and ultimately from "mens," meaning mind, with the suffix "-isation" added to turn it into a noun for a process. The suffix is the British spelling of "-ization," which carries the sense of making or becoming something, so the word literally names the act of bringing a mental state into view. Its meaning is especially tied to psychology, where it describes the capacity to read another person's beliefs, intentions and emotions. The sense has a more specific history than the word's parts suggest. The "mental" in the word is not about madness or mental illness but about the mind in general, and the process it names is one most people carry out constantly without noticing. Psychologists adopted the term to give a single name to that everyday skill, which is why it is most often heard in discussions of child development and social cognition.

Synonyms: cognition, thought, reasoning, perception, awareness

Antonyms: ignorance, unawareness, insensibility, stupidity, mindlessness