EMPATHY IS THE ROYAL ROAD to the private. It allows us to gain uncertain knowledge about another person's most nebulous and unique experiences. It differs necessarily from other processes of knowing because its subject matter is different. When we employ a descriptive psychiatry like Kraepelin's, we operate in a field of relative certainty. We can describe manifest affects, thought disorders, and behavior, and we can specify some of the invariant features that signal their presence without recourse to empathy.

But, as psychoanalysts, when we address questions of motivation, intention, and emotion, and we postulate that these may be different than our conscious awareness tells us, then we are in a domain with a different epistemology—the domain of empathy, where the most we can hope for is a hypothesis with a fragile degree of certainty.

How do we evaluate our hypotheses? Even consensual validation