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According to Freud, empathy plays the most important part in our understanding of other people. As a process of the ego, it denotes the ability to perceive in toto the nonverbalized feelings and moods of others. The author postulates that empathy is the expression of an inborn mode of contact with the environment as it strives to establish an 'identity of perception'. In early childhood empathy functions as the first emotional bridge between the human organism and environment. It is the means whereby a psychic unity with the mother is substituted postnatally for the physical unity provided by the umbilical cord. In this early period of life it is the means by which the infant, mostly through somesthetic and olfactory stimuli, maintains a direct connection with the mother's reactions and fluctuations of mood. Later, the child uses visual and auditory impressions for this purpose. As the child moves from his initial position of exclusive contact with the mother to multiple contact with other people, the empathic link with the mother becomes available for utilization, in a diluted form, with other people. With the acquisition of symbolism of thought and verbal language, it becomes less prominent but persists as a function of the ego which subserves the striving toward contact with the nonself. It varies among individuals and within the same individual, paralleling the vicissitudes of the ego's strength. The schizophrenic actually lacks empathic capacity; the rejection that he 'senses' is a projection of his indiscriminate feeling of being rejected.