Kohut's last presentation, in 1981, completed the circle in the spotlight he shone, since 1959, on the concept of empathy and its fundamental nature within psychoanalytic observation and data gathering. My own pathway in analytic training, molded particularly in comparative supervisory encounters, led me to recognize the extraordinary power in grappling with the implications in Freud's groundbreaking discovery, defining the domain of psychoanalysis: “psychic reality”—that is, inner reality—“as the decisive kind.” The concept of empathy, understood not as a theory-specific or technical stance, but as intrinsic to our mode of listening and observation, may then be viewed as a central dimension illuminating this intrapsychic domain—our psychoanalytic database. Clinical examples, including citations from the work of Freud and of Kohut and commentary from the late Japanese psychoanalyst, Takeo Doi, are offered for further elaboration.