EMPATHY AND EMPATHISM

The author begins by tracing the history of the concept of empathy in psychoanalysis, noting that, largely through the influence of Kohut, i t began to feature prominently in the literature from the late 1950s o n and has since tended wrongly in his opinion, to be regarded as an al l-purpose instrument to be deployed at will. What is often described i n theoretical contributions as empathy should in the author's view mor e properly be called concordance On the clinical level, the idea that the analyst must deliberately seek to empathise with the patient is st ated to have gained currency, but the author argues that such an attem pt to achieve empathy by force can lean only to 'empathism', which is a dogmatic, hyperconcordant attitude whereby the inexperienced analyst in particular think he can control the process better. Clinical mater ial is presented to show how some patients set out to induce 'empathis m' in the analyst for defensive reasons and holy the analyst's concord ance until analysed, may lean to art impasse. The author stresses that genuine empathy is a state of complementary conscious-preconscious co ntact based on separateness and sharing; covering not only the patient 's ego-syntonic subjectivity but also his defensive ego and split-off parts, its achievement requires prolonged hard work on the countertran sference and a capacity for contact with the analyst's own primitive a spects. The paper ends with a consideration of the possible obstacles to empathic contact.