A New Model for Conceptualizing Insightfulness in the Psychoanalysis of Young Children

Abstract

Traditional definitions of insight fail to take into account the cognitive and developmental limitations of young analysands, who lack the capacity to mentalize. It is suggested that insightfulness be redefined as promoting mentalization in young children. Gaining this key psychological function furthers the internal integration and self-regulation necessary to regain developmental momentum. The central importance of promoting such development in child psychoanalysis suggests that the facilitation of a mechanism for self-understanding, not the interpretation of content, is essential. Insightfulness is facilitated by employing a range of interventions beyond the interpretation of resistance and content, rendering meaningless the distinction between interpretive and relational aspects of the analyst's role.

Consciousness, awareness of insight and neural mechanisms of schizophrenia

“…phenomenon' related to a solution is interpreted as recognition of an organizing principle related to Gestalt (Kohler, 1925;Markova, 2005). On the other hand, from the psychoanalytical perspective, insight reflects most, a moment when a patient becomes aware of an inner conflict, when it emerges into consciousness not only just because of interpretations of unconscious contents but also due to self-understanding (Sugarman, 2003;Sirois, 2012).…”

Mentalization, insightfulness, and therapeutic action: The importance of mental organization

“…In contrast, helping patients who are prone to inhibiting mentalizing in the face of threatening internal cues requires that they learn to use their ideational capacity to modulate their emotional experience. (2003, p. 219) Once one realizes that the emphasis needs to be on expanding the mind's conscious access to its workings, it seems more useful to speak of what has elsewhere been called promoting insightfulness (Sugarman, 2003a) or insighting (Abrams, 1996;Boesky, 1990). These terms are synonymous with Mayes and Cohen's (1996) ideas about theory of mind and Fonagy and colleagues' (Fonagy and Target, 1996;Fonagy et al, 2002) concept of mentalization, and suggest that patients come to us unable to fully mentalize.…”

“…There is a developmental line of insightfulness (Sugarman, 2003a) that parallels developmental dimensions of mentalization (Lecours and Bouchard, 1997). Conscious self-refl ective insightfulness, with its implication of an ego split between experiencing and observing (Sterba, 1934), is the end point of this developmental line.…”

“…In these instances, self-disclosure seems important. Patients learn mentalization, in part, by observing our minds in action (Sugarman, 2003a). Hence it is incumbent upon us, at times, to make our minds available for analysands to see and experience.…”

Child versus adult psychoanalysis: Two processes or one?

“…Young children have been said to be incapable of insight (Kennedy, 1979), another 'truism' that can be questioned if one redefines insight as a function called insightfulness that needs to be promoted by the analyst (Sugarman, 2003a). From this perspective, ''the young child does not gain access so much to repudiated content as to a key psychological process that has been derailed by internal conflict' ' (p. 331).…”