BEYOND EMPATHY - ADVANCES IN THE CLINICAL THEORY AND METHODS OF EMPATHY

Empathy is generally acknowledged to include two components: (a) the therapist's seeing the patient's world the way the patient does and (b) the therapist's grasping what the patient is undergoing, thinking, feeling, and experiencing. A review of relatively recent developments indicates some advances in the clinical theory and methods of an external model and also of an ''in-the-patient's-shoes'' model of empathy, together with the emergence of an internal model whose clinical theory and methods may be regarded as going beyond the traditional theories and methods of empathy. Implications are drawn for the practitioner, clinical theorist, and researcher.