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For Everyone -
For Everyone
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2 h.
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Serbian
The Inner World of Other People: How Well Do We Truly Understand?
Regardless of our psychological background, each of us thinks about the people around us and tries to understand them. Even though we can never have direct access to someone else’s inner life, we effortlessly use concepts like feelings, beliefs, desires, needs, and intentions on a daily basis. But do we truly understand others — or do we just think we do?
About This Workshop
What you will learn
Understanding other people’s mental states allows us to predict their behavior with reasonable accuracy. Without these processes, navigating social relationships and any activity involving communication and coordination would be far more difficult.
In this workshop, through an active and empathic listening exercise, we’ll explore and strengthen some of our capacities for mentalization — for “putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes” — and reflect together on questions like:
- How do we use both lay and expert theories — and perhaps internal simulations — to understand others?
- How do our own traits and past experiences shape how well we understand other people?
- What factors make it harder to understand others, and what factors can help?
What does the workshop look like?
The workshop is built around an interactive active listening exercise with role rotation. Participants are divided into three groups: speakers, listeners, and observers.
The instructor uses everyday objects as prompts to share personal memories and experiences. Participants try to understand not just the words, but the feelings, attitudes, and values behind them. This is followed by feedback, and in the final part, all participants reflect and discuss their different experiences.
About the instructor
Predrag Žunić is a psychologist and psychotherapist with training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and MBT (Mentalization-Based Therapy). He works as a consultant in qualitative and mixed-method research, and as an educator in applied psychology.