empathy & T

does it matter to you whether your therapist is empathetic and/or understanding of what you are going through? What have been your experiences?

I haven't had much experience so i don't know if wanted a therapist who understands will make the difference in opening up and allow for exploration.

I would say yes.

Mine doesn't feed my pity party but she definitely conveys empathy. This has been very important to me.

<font color="purple">Empathy is a must for me </font>

hi,'I just posted on this.rdoc about 2pm.a therapist that care,honest and understanding. because a bad therapist can tragger you into sytems. we trust them with our emotional life when we open up. so if you do not feel comfortable do not wait get another one right away.empathy yes,power over you no.it,s like a friend to talk to not god rdoc

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snow123 said:
does it matter to you whether your therapist is empathetic and/or understanding of what you are going through? What have been your experiences?

I haven't had much experience so i don't know if wanted a therapist who understands will make the difference in opening up and allow for exploration.

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<font color="green"> If your T or PDOC aren't understanding and empathetic, then they shouldn't be in such a position of responsibility.

My T and PDOC are both empathetic, and understanding. It definitely matters. This isn't like surgery where you are unconscious during the process.

Therapy takes a T who is understanding, empathetic, and who can build an "therapeutic alliance" with his client/patient. </font>

Yeah, empathy means a great deal to me. I have significant difficulty building an alliance with and talking to therapists who are more rationally than empathetically focused. I need the empathetic attunement. That is what is healing for me. I haven't had much empathetic attunement in my life...

snow123, I always think of empathy and therapist going hand in hand--like you can't have one without the other. I would say, yes, it does matter to me. My current T is very empathetic. But come to think of it, my previous T was not particularly so. And we never had a strong connection or bond. Hmmmm.

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I have significant difficulty building an alliance with and talking to therapists who are more rationally than empathetically focused

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">Kim, so there is a whole branch of therapists (the rationals) who don't use empathy? Wow, that seems almost cruel to me. Would this group include CBT therapists? (My previous therapist was CBT, and as I wrote above, she was not particularly empathetic.)

Well, it depends on what you mean by empathy, of course.

By empathy I mean 'empathetic attunement' of the sort that theorists such as Kohut focus on as the most healing part of the theraputic relationship.

Kohut's stance on empathetic attunement has been the subject of numerous critiques. Ego psychologists rejected / mocked it for example by caricaturing it as the view that one could 'cure by love'. Ego psychology is much more 'confrontational' and focused on interpretations rather than empathy.

Kohut's stance on empathetic attunement has also been critiqued by CBT therapists (including pure cognitive therapists and pure behavioural therapists). They critiqued it on the grounds that theraputic progress was about educating the client into their thought distortions and educating the client as to the utility of of such things as activity scheduling and employing extinction / flooding techniques etc.

A great deal of this depends on what is meant by 'empathy'. The majority of people would agree that empathy is important. It is important for receptionists and waitresses and dentists and plastic surgeons and nurses to be empathetic. For some theorists empathy is the background non-specific effects that ALL varieties of therapy (and seeing psychiatrists and councellors etc) are supposed to have in common.

Kohut's view is that there is a particular kind of empathy - empathetic attunement that is more than a non-specific effect of therapy, however. It isn't a kind of empathy that one finds in receptionists and waitresses and dentists and plastic surgeons. It is a particular therapy technique. What is it? Schore has elaborated on it... It is a mirroring of emotional response, basically. Emotions in synch. Emotional attunement. Emotions can be used to communicate and as part of a 'holding environment' (part of Winncott's 'good enough' mother). While other theorists maintain that therapists are skilled professionals in virtue of knowing certain strategies and skills (such as activity scheduling, altering thought distortions etc) other theorists (Kohut, Schore, Winnicott etc) maintain that therapists are skilled professionals in virtue of knowing a particular strategy - that of empathetic attunement.

It is the empathetic attunement that I need. Extrordinary empathetic capacity that only some therapists value / are good at / see the curative power in...

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kim_johnson said:
Yeah, empathy means a great deal to me. I have significant difficulty building an alliance with and talking to therapists who are more rationally than empathetically focused. I need the empathetic attunement. That is what is healing for me. I haven't had much empathetic attunement in my life...

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EXACTLY!!!!

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It is the empathetic attunement that I need.

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I have the same experience. I have spent so much of my life without attunement from the people who should have given it; the power of my therapy primarily comes from my therapist saying and showing that what I feel is okay and makes sense. I used to spend all my psychic energy criticizing myself and hating myself. My T has shown me how to simply accept myself and my feelings compassionately.