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EMPATHY: FOUNDATION FOR INNER HEALING AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH Part I: Empathic Imagination and Psychotherapy By, Allen Pluth, Ph.D. Reference to a standard dictionary entry on "empathy" reveals the following derivation and definition: [ < Gr. empatheia, affection, passion < en-, in + pathos, feeling; used as translation of G. einfühlung ( < ein-, in + fühlung, feeling)], 1. the projection of one's own personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better (Guralnik et al., 1966, p. 475). By itself the ability to empathize is morally neutral. Empathy, however, can be used for both positive and negative purposes. It is regarded as an essential component or precondition of the moral feelings of compassion (derived from the Latin word for "suffering together"), sympathy, and pity. It can also be indispensable in the delicate arts of negotiation or arbitration. On the other hand, empathy can be utilized to manipulate others, or even as a means of deriving sadistic pleasure from another's pain. "Psychological warfare is based on empathy, and so are the tricks of the skilled salesman" (Samuels, 1985, p. 147). It is of course only the positive, virtuous aspects of empathy that should be employed in psychotherapy; otherwise what is operative is politics, a contest, with conquest rather than a common quest as the purpose of the journey. How exactly is empathy attained? Shelley (1966), in his Defense of Poetry, stated that the development of the ability to put one's self "in the place of another" necessitated the activation of the imagination (p. 283). The New Testament provides one of the clearest examples of how the imagination is required for spiritual and ethical growth: Christ's exhortation to perceive the indwelling presence of divinity within all creatures as the basis for moral action in the Parable of the Last Judgment (Mt. 25:31-46). As Price (1999, p. 88) states: ³imagination--as it thinks its way into the lives of others--remains our strongest means of human understanding and compassion.² Contemporary psychological exploration of the phenomenon of empathy starts with the basic understanding that imagination is essential. Kohut, for example, defined empathy as "vicarious introspection" (1977, p. 306), which places the practitioner "at an imaginary point inside the psychic organization of the individual with whom he empathically identifies² (1971, p. 219). Empathy involves imaginally and entirely entering another's point of view in order to illuminate behavioral motivation, participating in another's conscious existence, "becoming" another's actual subjectivity and experiencing reality, both affective and cognitive, from that perspective. It does not mean imagining what one's own self would do if one were to be in someone else's situation. Nor does it have anything to do with projective identification, i.e., the invasive defense mechanism involving the unconscious process of splitting off undesired parts of one's self, placing, and then perceiving them in another person as carrier. Empathy is rather like a metaphor used by Glück (1994) to describe the interview process: "hitchhiking in someone else's experience" (p. 22). Empathy necessitates clearing one's mind of preconceptions and expectations, suspending one's judgment, and opening one's self to inexhaustible possibilities. Margulies (1984) states a related principle from phenomenological research: "One suspends what one knows so that one might discover what one could not see before" (p. 1028). Margulies' analysis of the importance of this principle to the productive use of empathy in therapy is especially relevant to this study, since he utilizes a concept developed by Shelley's friend, the poet John Keats: In a now famous letter to his brothers, Keats wrote that Shakespeare possessed the quality of a "Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason" . . . . How accurately he captured the therapist's and the poet's dilemma! This "irritable reaching" is what Husserl and Freud were warning against; the ability to maintain an evenly hovering attention, to suspend the world, requires a negative capability, the capacity to go against the grain of needing to know (p. 1029). Along with possessing the ability to sustain states of cognitive uncertainty, creative artists actually seem to be able at times to deny, suspend, or suppress their own sense of self. Again, Margulies cites Keats: A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity--he is continually in for--and filling some other Body--The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute--the poet has none; no identity--he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures . . . he has no self (p. 1030). Margulies relates this denial of self to therapeutic neutrality, and acknowledges the conscious effort required by the therapist to attain this ideal of self-abnegation. He cites another illustration from Keats: When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins to press upon me [so] that I am in a very little time annihilated (p. 1030). Another poet spoke of the price to be paid for attaining a similar state of self-abnegation: "A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)" (Eliot, 1943, p. 59). If "negative capability," a process of purging one's presuppositions and clearing one's perceptual field, constitutes the preliminary or preparatory phase in the development of empathy, Margulies suggests the term "positive capability" for the second stage. This would correspond to the German term "Einfühlung, meaning . . . 'feeling into something'" (1984, p.1030), which was eventually translated after Keats' time, via a Greek word formation, as "empathy" in English (see the derivation above). Whereas the first stage "requires a constant vigilance to maintain," empathy itself requires more creative effort of the imagination. The ability to identify with another can be developed. Margulies deplores, however, the general lack of valuable training in empathy in the field of psychotherapy: Yet, in my own training as a therapist, I often felt that though empathy was vitally important, it seemed a more receptive aspect of therapy, a setting or "holding" function rather than an active, searching, and even imaginative process. Perhaps my misconception followed from the paucity of psychotherapy literature on empathic imagination. Even the current self psychology literature often relegates empathy to a secondary status--a prelude to the real thing, interpretation (1984, p. 1031). As a contribution toward a remedy for this situation, Margulies' discussion centered on the creative or poetic aspect of empathy which Buie (1981) identified as "imaginative imitation empathy" (imitation in fantasy of a useful model of the client's inner world). Buie proposed three other categories of empathy which can be operating as well: "conceptual" (perceptual understanding of a client), "self-experiential" (from the therapist's feelings, associations, and memories), and "resonant" (contagious affect). According to Margulies, some therapists, such as Carl Rogers, may be more comfortable with the passive, echoing aspects of empathy. Others, like Martin Buber, may prefer the more active, searching modes. Margulies recommends a balanced blend of both: A complex empathic stance is at once both a passive, echoing experience and an active imagining of the unknowable of the other. Empathy itself emerges from the ongoing network of these competing and augmenting forces (p. 1032). He cautions the therapist to self-correct continually to eliminate as much as possible any projection of his or her own internal values onto the client, and to be constantly alert for countertransference issues. Margulies concludes: "The therapist must strive for a position of tension between knowing and not-knowing" (p. 1032). This tension comes into play when one engages what Havens and Palmer (1984) call "perceptual empathy." They regard this as "the most subtle form of empathy:" It is a seeing something for the first time, the escape from the categorical into the unique. Matisse told his students: go out and see a flower for the first time--not the idea of a flower, the preconception of what a flower is like, but the real flower before one. Then one moves from recognition to discovery (p. 290). This discovery is most likely to occur when the therapist is willing to ask the client directly, or a personified aspect of the client's psyche, the crucial question implied in this significant statement: "For the empathic worker, establishing empathic contact involves finding the other and, importantly, what the other wants" (p. 287). "What do you need or desire?" This question may be posed by the therapist to the client in many ways throughout the course of treatment. It may be addressed to a personified component of the client's psyche as well. Additionally, the therapist may vicariously enter the client's ego identity, or even an aspect of the client's psyche, imagine the motives behind its operations, and construct a hypothetical model of the client's inner dynamics. This working model, after appropriate testing, should prove to be an invaluable guide to the healing process. Much more will be said in Part II of this article about empathic imagination and how it is learned (developmental psychology), its connection to moral development and ethical concerns (Kohlberg), how it can be taught and nurtured, its social function, etc. It is evident in the case of psychic or physical pain however, that only after one directly experiences suffering can one reason by analogy and imaginally generalize to others' experience. There is a category of "wounded healers" in all societies and times, from ancient shamen to contemporary psychotherapists, whose specialized function it is to identify with others' suffering in compassion. They then utilize their own experience of pain and healing to further the healing process in others. These specialists, because their individual experience is necessarily limited, must rely on the operation of empathic imagination to apprehend manifold varieties of psychic suffering, in order to be able to enhance the therapeutic process for their clients. REFERENCES Buie, D. H. (1981). Empathy: Its nature and limitations. Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Association, 29, 281-307. Eliot, T. S. (1943). Four quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. Glück, R. (1994, June 2). What we love chooses us. San Diego Reader, pp. 1, 16-28. Guralnik, B., & Friend, J. H. (1966). Webster's new world dictionary. Cleveland: World Publishing Co. Havens, L. L., & Palmer, H. L. (1984). Forms, difficulties, and tests of empathy. Hillside Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 6(2), 285-291. Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press. Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press. Margulies, A. (1984). Toward empathy: the uses of wonder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 141(9), 1025-1033. Reynolds, P. (1999). Jesus of Nazareth: Then and Now. Time Magazine, Dec. 6, 84-94. Samuels, A. (1985). Jung and the post-Jungians. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Shelley, P. B. (1966). Shelley's prose (D. L. Clark, Ed.). Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Allen Allen Pluth, Ph.D. (AllenPluth@CenterForInnerWork.com) |
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