The Limits of Empathy

Moliere's physician, asked why opium caused sleep, answered that it was because opium contains “a dormitive principle.” Naming, crucial for learning, at times becomes a place where the mind itself begins to doze. In the history of psychoanalysis, we have seen names that started as valuable contributions too often used to close off questioning. Defenses, resistance, projective identification, holding, and containing—each of these enriching concepts has been degraded by some into a shibboleth of parochial allegiance. Caution is needed when we are tempted to expand our concepts because, in the face of unending uncertainty, we are all vulnerable to compromising discipline in our longing for final answers.

Empathy, too, is a valuable concept that at times has been stretched beyond its natural shape to serve as a universal explanation. Let us first consider some misapplications of the concept and then, returning to empathy proper, begin to place the concept in the context of new developments in analytic thinking.

First, misapplications, those distortions that dilute the validity of the basic idea of empathy. Too often we debate by misrepresenting opposing views, creating straw men easy to tear down. My attention to misuses of the concept of empathy is meant to clear away misrepresentations, to protect—not undermine—what is truly valid in the concept.

The word “empathy” was imported from aesthetics, where it is used to describe a means of perception. That question of how