Empathy and its pitfalls

Abstract

In the article the authors trace the development of the concept of empathy which came to the field of psychoanalysis from aesthetics. For Freud it was part of the word Einfühlung. The authors try to define the exact meaning of empathy and to distinguish it clearly from countertransference and projective counteridentification. They introduce as a new concept the perceptive quality of empathy through which excessive activity as well as passivity can be avoided. They look at the pitfalls of empathy that result from a poor understanding of the concept on the one side and from unnatural, forced empathy on the other. They look at the specifics and the role of empathy in group analysis. In experienced groups empathy shows itself as the empathy of the group as a whole.