Empathy and psychoanalytic technique.

Abstract

I have attempted to review the major psychoanalytic contributions to our understanding of empathy within the psychoanalytic situation. In doing so, I have discussed the relation between empathy and identification, reviewed aspects of the metapsychology of analytic comprehension, and have described the role of the analyst's evenly hovering attention in empathic responsiveness, as noted by several analytic investigators of empathy. The interrelations between empathy and countertransference have been described, and neutrality issues as they relate to empathy have been noted. Certain themes around the development of empathy have been grouped together and critically examined. The work of Kohut with regard to empathy has been discussed in relation to earlier psychoanalytic contributions of which it is an outgrowth and expansion. The changes in meaning and emphasis of empathic processes in Kohut's works have been described and critically reviewed. Empathy in its popular usage refers to the capacity of one person to communicatively partake, in a limited way, in the experience of another. In its differentiation from sympathy and pity, its noncritical or value-neutral character is emphasized. This description of empathy indicates its relevance to psychoanalytic technique, which shares many similar characteristics. Empathy is a general or superordinate term for many more specific aspects of the sensitive interpersonal interactions in the intimacy of relationships like the psychoanalytic one. Attempts to assign a particular psychoanalytic technical meaning to empathy or build clinical and developmental theory around empathy are limited by the multiple referents and generality of the concept. Empathy as a term has its place as descriptive of the analyst's emotional relatedness to the patient. It does not refer to any specific psychoanalytic technical intervention or theoretical construct; rather, it describes in a general way the sensitive, tactful, and experience-near way in which the analyst approaches the inner life of his patients.