Intersubjectivitiy, Creative Uncertainty, and Systems Theory: An Approach to the Clinical Use of Empathy

This article delineates my personal philosophical position in relation to the place of empathy in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. In a larger sense, I demonstrate a continuing commitment to an eclectic or polytheoretical position—described previously in two papers, “Playing and the Eclectic/Integrative Position: D. W. Winnicott, Therapeutic Space and the Development of Clinical Wisdom,” (Anshin, 1989) and “Winnicott, Pragmatism, Poetry, Empathy and Contemporary Psychoanalysis” (Anshin, 1991). I begin this article by making some comments on the complex process of empathy—a term that at times seems like the Balkan Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia—a subject seen in many differing ways by various observers with a variety of points of view. My comments will then focus on the related subject of intersubjectivity, again a term with a myriad of meanings. I close with a description of my personal systems theoretical approach to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, and relate this to my views on empathy and intersubjectivity.

What is empathy? In his 1983 article on empathy, Basch, an eminent self-psychologist, uses the American Heritage Dictionary (p. 103) definition—“understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts, and motives are readily comprehended by another” (Basch, 1983). In his article, Basch, in general, evidences a more optimistic and totalistic view of the central role of empathy within the therapeutic situation than do a number of other authors, including myself. The Webster