The role of empathy in psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A historical exploration

Empathy is one of the most consistent outcome predictors in contemporary psychotherapy research. The function of empathy is particularly important for the development of a positive therapeutic relationship: patients report positive therapeutic experiences when they feel understood, safe, and able to disclose personal information to their therapists. Despite its clear significance in the consulting room and psychotherapy research, there is no single, consensual definition of empathy. This can be accounted by the complex and multi-faceted nature of empathy, as well as the ambiguous and conflicting literature surrounding it. This paper provides a historical exploration of empathy and its impact on the therapeutic relationship across the most influential psychoanalytic psychotherapies: classic psychoanalysis, person-centered therapy and self-psychology. By comparing the three clinical schools of thought, the paper identifies significant differences in the function of transference and therapist’s role. Then, drawing on the different clinical uses of empathy, the paper argues that the earlier uses of empathy (most notably through Jaspers’ and Freud’s writings) are limited to its epistemological (intellectual or cognitive) features, whilst person-centered and self-psychology therapies capitalise on its affective qualities. Finally, the paper provides a rationale for further study of the overarching features of empathy in contemporary psychotherapy research

Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self in contemporary organising.

Over the last two decades, managerialism (Enteman, 1993) has become consolidated on multiple fronts. As a formula of governance, it has elaborated various vocabularies: the `audit society' (Power, 1997, 2007) has become entrenched in all types of organizations; surveillance methods (Lyon, 2001) have become increasingly dispersed and insidious; and — alongside —`new' concepts of subjectivity and the`self' are used to frame more intense regimes of self-discipline or what Tipton (1984) called `self-work'. These moves have been captured by Heelas (2002), Thrift (1997) and others in the term `soft capitalism'. In this article, we reflect upon this phenomenon by analysing some examples: `culture', `performativity', `knowledge' and `wellness'. Although they belong to a group often described as `fads' and `fashions' and dismissed as managerial `mumbo-jumbo', we suggest that their proliferation indicates a more stable cultural tendency of management discourses to capture subjectivity in its general agenda. We attempt to offer an historical-cultural interpretation from which this range of managerial concepts might be viewed. Our argument suggests that they have a certain cultural coherence that can be perhaps better glimpsed within a wider historical context. As a particular way in which managerialism frames its logic, analysing `soft capitalism' historically offers a reasonable basis for understanding the strength of its hard disciplinary edge as a regime of governance