Empathy's romantic dialectic - Self psychology, intersubjectivity, and imagination

The author views Kohut's conceptualization of psychoanalytic empathy and it s subsequent development by intersubjectivity theorists as an extension of a larger Romantic epistemological tradition in which the role of imaginatio n in mental life is both central and precise. To illuminate this argument, the author reconsiders Kohut's distinction between the "presence of empathy " and "empathy as a mode of observation." Next is described the way in whic h the ambivalence represented by this distinction is resolved through inter subjectivity theory. Finally, the author explores several key aspects of th e Romantic imagination as a response to Cartesianism in order to evolve an understanding of empathy as a bilateral procedure mediating self-experience and experience of the other.