Mindreading and introspection

In this article I argue for a developmental asymmetry between “mindreading” (i.e., third-person mentalization) and “introspection” (i.e., first-person mentalization); then I examine the implications of this claim for the literature at the interface of theory of attachment and theory of mind. The agenda of the paper is the following. I begin with Peter Carruthers’ strong case for the claim that mindreading has a functional and evolutionary priority over introspection. His model, however, does not predict that mindreading is developmentally prior to introspection. It will be argued here, in contrast, that if introspection is not taken as a competence in isolation, but rather placed in its context of meaning, viz. that of the construction and defense of subjective identity, good reasons emerge for arguing that it develops through the act of turning on oneself the capacity to mindread other people; and that this occurs through that socio-communicative interaction with caregivers which is the subject of the psychodynamics of attachment. I conclude that the claim of a priority of mindreading over introspection puts strong constraints on theorizing about the relation between attachment and mentalization.