The psychoanalyst's empathic understanding has two functions. First, it concerns the patient as he is known to himself and as he increasingly becomes known to the therapist. Second, it concerns the patient's unconscious personality structure which is alien to the patient himself. The experience of the 'known other' is conveyed through colloquial communications while the experience of the 'alien other' must first be explored through a hermeneutic procedure sui generis which does not take the communicated material at face value.