title: On the way to empathic understanding.
abstract: Empathy in psychotherapy has come to be regarded as useful, although there has been debate about its role. Some feel empathic understanding to be curative in itself; others consider it a step toward insight. Whether empathic understanding should be regarded as conscious or unconscious, affective or intellectual, adaptive or defensive, has received much consideration. A case illustration is used to show that "empathic understanding" is the end result of a complex process; that the ability to tolerate a state of puzzlement enhances and punctuates this process; that many modalities, including identification, projection, and distancing, occurring in any order, contribute to it; that the process places a strain on the therapist's sense of self; and that the essential ingredient is the presence of an overriding integrating capacity. At the moment of empathic responsiveness, the therapist is able to regard himself as separate and autonomous from the patient.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009289:Narcissism; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D009626:Terminology as Topic