Theory of Mind for Dummies?

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I don't think "content" is really the right word for how they felt about the situation. I think your previous term of "not upset the apple cart" was more accurate. When they just bitched about her behind her back, they took no risk. Standing up to her involves risk- a risk they were not willing to take but you were. Perhaps you didn't particularly care about the things that might be lost by standing up to her (it isn't really a risk if you don't want what might be lost). Perhaps you thought the benefit outweighed the risk. Perhaps it wasn't a risk for you because the fallout for you standing up to her would be different than the fallout for them.

What is the risk? It all depends on the family dynamics. There are many reasons why people won't take the risk of standing up to somebody. In a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law situation there are a couple which are very common. Whether or not these are in play in that situation is something only you can know by observing family dynamics.

Risk 1: the husbands are very loyal to their mother and would be furious with their wives and not at all understanding or forgiving if their wife stood up to their mother. It all depends on the man. Some men (your husband???) have no problem with it and may even be unsurprised and supportive. Other men (their husbands????) may be furious that their wives have done this and not supportive at all. Thus the wives are not content with bitching behind her back but prefer it to the damage to their marital relationship that would happen if their husbands suddenly felt they had to choose between their wife and their mother (and this is how it would seem in some marriages).

Risk 2: the mother-in-law holds power over the daughters-inlaw in some form. She may have financial power in the form of who gets what in her will. She may have power in the community and ability to turn others in the community against any daughter-in-law reckless enough to stand up to her.

The fact that the other daughters-in-law admired what you did and said they wished they could do it yet didn't do it makes me think that risk factor 1 or 2 may be in play for them. It doesn't sound like they are content with the situation at all (or they wouldn't wish they could stand up to her as you did). But rather that they feel they have more to lose from doing so than what they will gain. You may have lost nothing. But then again, although you share a mother-in-law, you don't share a husband so their own marriage dynamics may have been affected very differently than yours and they knew that and so said nothing to her face.

Wow, you're good. I have this urge to grab you and stick you in my head as a very useful add-on!

Do you mind me asking if you're an aspie or NT, and what your profession/interests are?

This is an interesting thread. The story about the in-laws reminded me of something an old (very NT) friend of mine pointed out: That the easiest way to bond with someone is to find someone you both dislike and b***h about them.

That Parsinger page someone linked really clicked with me.

Everyone has two "senses of self", in their left and right hippocampus. I called it my temporal sense, but it's the same idea.

The left one is generally dominant, and specialized for social types of interaction, language, communication, so on. The right is left in a dormant sort of state, only accessed when needed for calculation or other cognitive thinking.

When people project a theory of mind onto someone else, they're taking their emotional/social sense of self and reflecting an impression of what they model in someone else's mind, based on numerous cues. Verbal, posture, etc, all are "calculated" intuitively against the cognitive sense of self as though it were the other party.

I am located in my right sense of self, I am in the cognitive part, the social part is generally dormant, only lit up to process emotional input to feed over to "me", and I have to perform calculations in the sense of self that lacks the emotional processing, trying to determine what is going on in the head of another person.


Can I do it decently? Eh, somewhat, I am better at controlling situations to suit my understanding, or simply dismissing them if they clash too badly with my models. I can fake it, but as others have said, it's a pain in the ass, and I long ago decided there was no reason to do so.


I'm a cat, it is perfectly acceptable for me to refuse to fetch, sit, or roll over.

I'm NT, my daughter has autism (not Aspergers, though). By nature I'm a nerdy intellectual which means one of my interests is sinking my teeth into a nice, juicy theory and chewing on it. Theory of Mind fits the bill nicely. By profession I'm a physical therapist so I've spent the last couple decades advising people what exercises they will find helpful. It's an easy habit to fall into here. It is also a job which I believe has given me a lot of practice reading body language. I spend a lot more time with any given patient than the doctors do and it's my job to observe their body language to figure out what they can do to heal. It's also my job to observe changes in their bodies from one visit to the next. You can ask people "where does it hurt?" but if that is your sole or even main source of information for learning about their pain, you will miss a lot and be far less effective as a therpist.

Now, I have excellent theory of body.

I can tell exactly what hurts, what feels better, give wonderfully accurate shiatsu type tissue massages, all that noise. It doesn't hurt that I can reproduce images I've seen from anatomical textbooks by hand, which is a terribly limited version compared to the image in my head.

I understand the animal part of people, it's the crazy thing inside their skulls I'm not as good with.

Honourable NT Member topic

May her tribe increase!!

Thank you, Janissy.
And when you do market the plug in product, please do put me on your customer list!

Well theory of mind, as the word say is a theory and like every theory can be learned. I usually say: we don't born with theory of horses or theory of dogs, but we can learn to understand them. The same holds for humans.

By the way, I don't think that we lack something, the infamous experiment of the 2 box, wich one, etc.. it's over semplicistic, many NT miss it too. Also they are 2 different kind of theory of mind:

a) (the one from the test) measure the ability to see the world from a different (but objective) perspective.
b) the one in social situation measure the ability to see the world from a different subjective framework.

I mean, an Aspie can put himself in other people shoes, the problem is that in those situation he/she will act differently. NTs simply have thoery of NTs, not theory of mind, otherwise they'll not consider people with autism stupid, they'll not make racial/religious wars, etc.. they know themself and are surrounded by people like them. I'm pretty sure that I'll not have "theory of mind" problem in an AS group.