Psychoanalytic writers have devoted much of their attention to the importance of empathy as an adjunct to their work. While some have alluded to the sources of empathy in earlier developmental circumstances, little has been written regarding its dynamic structural and genetic substructure. The current exploration of empathy is drawn from the analysis of a patient whose empathic response seems to have had a defensive function and also pointed to genetic roots in imitation.

The defensive structure of some empathic responses is utilized to illuminate the structure, dynamics, and origins of empathy and the role of projection. Earlier undifferentiated forms of projection-identification as they occur in regressive states are postulated. The knowledge gained from the therapeutic observation and theoretical model is then applied to the therapeutic situation in order to show the distortions and pitfalls of the overzealous use of empathic states by patients and analysts alike.