Paper Session A

3. From an Empathic Stance to an Empathic Dance: Empathy as a Bidirectional Negotiation

Self Psychology Page | 23rd Conference Program

Overview

This presentation is organized around a clinical case that illustrates one analyst’s movement from an empathic stance to an empathic dance. An analytic empathic stance is a unidirectional, sustained immersion in the patient’s subjectivity. An empathic dance is bidirectional. We expand on Sucharov’s (1996) metaphor of the empathic dance which includes the analyst’s attention to the patient’s self experience (empathy), the analyst’s self experience (authenticity), and the meta-perspective of the dyad. We are broadening the definition of empathy from something that one person does for or to another (putting oneself in the other’s shoes), to include a bilateral empathic connectedness which is a bridge between two subjectivities. Instead of a focus on the analyst’s empathic interpretations, we speak about the analytic couple negotiating meaning making on a moment to moment basis.

The clinical case captures the struggle of an analyst trained to provide sustained empathic attention, working with a patient who presses for spontaneous emotional engagement as a requirement for selfobject connection. We discuss the mutual regulation of meaning making, affect and issues of control in this tumultuous treatment.

Self Psychology Page | 23rd Conference Program