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Sigmund Freud called the interpretation of dreams “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (Freud, 1953/1900, p. 608). Some psychoanalysts today might agree with Freud's statement, and personally I value dream interpretation, but that practice is no longer so prioritized. Many psychoanalysts would declare empathy to be the royal road to the unconscious. But there is much confusion and puzzlement about just what empathy is.
Thomas A. Kohut has written a book that he describes as a primer on empathy for historians. I see it as the definitive exploration of empathy. Though written with historians in mind, it is of equal value for the large majority of readers of this journal who are psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic therapists. With those readers in mind, I will emphasize ways in which the book is relevant to them.
Kohut, a distinguished historian specializing in the study of modern Germany, is a professor at Williams College. His writings include a psychologically informed biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II (Kohut, 1991). In addition to having a doctorate in history from the University of Minnesota, he underwent training as a research candidate at the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute. Few readers of this review have failed to note by now that he has the same last name as did the influential psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut, who, indeed, was his father. Kohut (2020, p. xi) notes that his father saw empathy as defining “psychoanalysis as a field of inquiry into the inner life of human beings.” Thomas Kohut is essentially bringing his father's view to historians. Those scholars inevitably use empathy, he notes, but do so with discomfort and awkwardness because they tend to believe that the writing of history should be rational and objective. He sets out to explain what empathy is and how and why to use it.
Kohut (2020, p. 4) describes empathy as a way to know people “by imagining, thinking, and perhaps even feeling one's way inside their experience.