This communication considers the clinical and theoretical aspects of empathy, emphasizing the role of identification and the distinction between the self and the nonself. We have stressed how empathy is mediated by the communication of unconscious fantasy shared by the patient and the analyst. The cues for this communication are both verbal and nonverbal: they emanate from words, gestures, and behavior.

The empathic process which is central to the psychotherapeutic relationship between patient and therapist is also a basic element in all human interaction and finds its highest social expression in the shared æsthetic experience of the artist and his audience, as well as in religion and other group phenomena.