Sympathy usually means entering into and sharing feelings that another person has verbally and intentionally expressed; empathy involves intuiting something unspoken, of which the other person may sometimes be entirely unaware. A psychotherapist’s ability to empathize with and understand unconscious parts of a client’s communication depends in large part upon feeling comfortable with those parts within him- or herself. Personal psychotherapy must therefore play a central part in training.
Category: The Psychotherapy Relationship
Can’t or Won’t?
Psychologically speaking, does everyone *always* do the best he or she can?
The Cycle of Crime and Punishment in Psychotherapy
A discussion of the psychological cycle of crime and punishment in people who never seem to learn from their experience or grow in psychotherapy.
The Pleasures of Solitude
Pleasure in solitude — the enjoyment of one’s own company — is one of the compensations for the existential loneliness of the human condition.
Merger Fantasies in Psychotherapy
Bipolar and borderline clients who feel hopeless about their capacity for meaningful change often idealize their therapists and unconsciously try to merge with them; this fantasy of merger represents an escape from the damaged self into an alternative ideal self embodied by the therapist, a sort of personal growth by annexation.