Professor Peter Fonagy, one of the founders of mentalization theory, honoured the conference audience with an online lecture. Despite the physical distance, he brought us strikingly close to themes that had a strong emotional impact on participants. Even within the virtual format, his greeting in Hungarian and his warm, engaging presence helped us to better appreciate the central importance of trust.

In his presentation, he addressed the individual and social processes underlying epistemic trust and mistrust, as well as the psychological mechanisms that support or undermine them, which are also highly relevant to the development of mental disorders. Moving beyond individual wellbeing, he drew attention to the broader social foundations of wellbeing, highlighting the challenges and threats to trust in 21st-century culture.

He emphasised that, as human beings, we are inherently vulnerable to ruptures in our relationships, and that experiences of misunderstanding, loneliness, and social exclusion can be profoundly damaging. Our capacity to survive and thrive depends on being able to trust others, to feel understood, and to experience a sense of belonging. This forms the basis for social cooperation and shared problem-solving. Mentalization is central to this process and refers to the capacity for reflective thinking about oneself, others, and shared interpersonal experience. The experience of being in a “we-mode” – a state of mutual understanding – develops gradually across the lifespan. It can be described as a layered, recursive form of awareness in which we are able to perceive how the other person sees us, while also reflecting on how we see ourselves and the world. This recursive experience of understanding might be captured as: “I understand that you understand how I understand,” or “I see how you see how I see things.” This captures the sense of being understood and the subjective experience of epistemic trust.

When relational ruptures cannot be repaired, this shared sense of understanding becomes difficult to access. Mentalization may become inhibited, making it more challenging to navigate interpersonal relationships. In such states of uncertainty, individuals may become either excessively mistrustful or overly credulous. When we are no longer able to discern whom to trust, we may fail to cooperate with those who could genuinely support us, while an uncritical suspension of healthy scepticism may leave us vulnerable to misinformation, fake news, and conspiracy narratives as guiding frameworks for decision-making. These difficulties are well known to professionals in helping roles – such as teachers, social workers, healthcare professionals, psychologists, and researchers. Increasing inequality, social injustice, and processes of marginalisation contribute to widening divides between groups, value systems, and shared epistemic frameworks. At the core of these processes lie experiences of shame and not feeling understood.

We are currently living through a crisis of trust – the foundation of shared understanding and cooperation – experienced across individual roles (e.g. teacher-student, doctor-patient, therapist-patient) as well as broader social identities (groups, status positions). Yet we often struggle to find our way back to a genuine “we-mode” state of mutual understanding. Professor Fonagy did not shy away from highlighting the risks posed by digital technologies and artificial intelligence, which may intensify these processes by creating an illusion of being seen, heard, and emotionally held – the sense of belonging somewhere. Such an illusion may be generated by platforms such as ChatGPT, online advertising, propaganda, or extremist online content that disseminates misinformation. Yet the actual experience of genuine relational understanding remains absent.

At times during the lecture, it was easy to feel discouraged and to lose trust in the possibility of repair. Fortunately, Professor Fonagy also offered a way forward, grounded in mentalization theory and clinical practice. Rather than relying on complex technical interventions, he emphasised a more fundamental stance: curiosity about the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of those we come into contact with. On this basis, we are invited to hold mistrust with understanding, to bridge perceived or actual differences, and to dismantle the “walls of shame.” We are further encouraged to build communities, engage in dialogue across differing perspectives, and integrate our knowledge so that we may enter a cooperative relational state – the “we-mode” – with one another.

We are grateful to Professor Fonagy and to digital technologies for making this lecture accessible, thereby contributing to our understanding of mentalization and strengthening our shared sense of epistemic trust.

This summary is based on Professor Peter Fonagy’s online presentation, “The Epistemic Crisis of Trust in the Early 21st Century and Its Impact on Development and Psychotherapy,” delivered at the Trust Crisis – Mentalization-Based Therapies conference.