The articles submitted on the topic of the book "Mentalisation and Symbol Formation" could provide answers to these and similar questions. From the essays that are now actually available, one main focus has emerged: the majority of the contributions deal predominantly with the concept of mentalisation - albeit from very different perspectives. The book reviews that follow the contributions, on the other hand, are very mixed - they seem to reflect a lively discussion on this topic that prevailed at that time. The sum of the different works sufficiently explains the mentalisation concept.