This paper disputes the claim that our understanding of others is enabled by a commonsense or 'folk' psychology, whose 'core' involves the attribution of intentional states in order to predict and explain behaviour. I argue that interpersonal understanding is seldom, if ever, a matter of two people assigning intentional states to each other but emerges out of a context of interaction between them. Self and other form a coupled system rather than two wholly separate entities equipped with an

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... rnalised capacity to assign mental states to the other. This applies even in those instances where one might seem to adopt a 'detached' perspective towards others. Thus 'folk psychology', as commonly construed, is not folk psychology.