“Reality testing” is a distinction that is in the background of Matthew Ratcliffe’s penetrating and incisive book Real Hallucinations: Psychiatric Illness, Intentionality, and the Interpersonal World(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017, 290 pp.). Disturbances of the sense of reality are among… Read More ›
Three criteria are front and center in selecting a psychotherapist: empathy, schedule, and cost. I might say “empathy, empathy, and empathy,” but cost and schedule are important too. Absent a warm empathic, gracious and generous listening, many people find that psychotherapy is indistinguishable from going to the dentist – i.e., painful. When delivered in a context of empathy, psychotherapy can make a difference in getting unstuck, eliminating or reducing emotional upset, and expanding possibilities for personal growth. My commitment is to deliver empathy.
In thinking about the stigma of mental illness I saw in a flash that the stigma is due to discovering the Other within coming at me in the form of another person from without. On a bad day it can… Read More ›
Abstracts for presentations addressing these issues and not exceeding 600 words should be sent to the conference secretary martin.gunnarson@sh.se no later than the 15 of April. Final program will be distributed in May.
This work is now available thanks to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Empathy and Sympathy in Ethics. URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/emp-symp/ This work is in effect an unpublished chapter (now published) from my book Empathy in the Context of Philosophy (Palgrave… Read More ›
And here is the presentation delivered Sunday April 17, 2011: CHPCases20110306 Empathy is fundamental to an account of the dynamics of emotions in that empathy is responsible for a person’s emotional equilibrium, homeostasis, balance. Speaking in the first person, without… Read More ›
This is the presentation in PowerPoint (PPT) format on Heidegger’s Special Hermeneutic of Empathy here: SHPAgostaEmpathy20101214 [click to download] as delivered at the Conference on Humanistic Psychology (Chicago) sponsored by the Chicago School of Professional psychology… According to Heidegger (Being… Read More ›
Your psychotherapy session is now a major HBO Miniseries, In Treatment. Mine too. Two obvious questions occur. One for prospective clients, one for therapists. If I go to see a therapist about some personal issues and problems, is this what… Read More ›
I am humbled by the comments of my colleagues, friends, and associates on Empathy in the Context of Philosophy. “An insightful and provocative exploration of a topic that has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves and the… Read More ›
As noted on the first page of the attached article, “intersubjectivity” is understood in the article to mean our interrelated being together with one another in the interhuman world of regard for and sensitivity to the feelings of other individuals… Read More ›
Empathy Lessons 