The concept of empathy is discussed from the standpoint of differing theoretical models. The author's view, in the context of a developmental model, is that diverse concepts of empathy become sequential and complementary rather than antagonistic. Each theoretical model is seen as a narrow focus on a single level of development of empathic skills to the exclusion of prior skills and capacities of the individual. Perhaps the psychoanalytic model, with its emphasis on adaptive regression, is the most helpful in integrating different positions. The 'peculiar emotional linkage' of the empathic process, which originally appears to express an archaic primary relationship between the mother and the neonate, is presented not as appearing or disappearing at different developmental stages, but rather as changing in pattern and adaptability depending on the maturing of various psychological functions.