THE ABILITY TO SHARE ANOTHER PERSONS FEEL INGS - ABOUT EMPATHY

The ability of empathy includes different competences. being infected by emotions, the adoption of another person's perspective and the capa bility to understand the social context. All three competences have to be learned through social experiences. A theory of the empathic proce ss has to describe, how it is possible to experience emotions and phan tasies of another person in the self as one's own and to recognize the m as belonging to the other. The theoretically founded attempt to diff erentiate between self-perception and the perception of the other prov es necessarily to reach an impass. A constructivistic hypothesis seems to be more appropriate here, that conceives empathy as a personal dra ft. This draft is directed by one's own inner objects and by concrete experiences with the other as well. In the psychoanalytic dialogue bot h participants, patient and analyst, develop their empathic drafts and try to reach through them an understanding.