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Article

Understanding Empathy

Pages 39-57
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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This article considers different understandings of empathy in Psychotherapy and transactional analysis, including Carl Rogers's contribution to the development and understanding of empathy. A review of his necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic change clarifies the bilateral and intersubjective nature of empathic understanding, empathy, and empathic transactions. Various aspects of empathy are elaborated in terms of Stark's (1999) taxonomy of psychologies, and a fourth, two-person-plus psychology, is proposed to reflect an empathy that is sociocentric rather than egocentric.

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Keith Tudor

Keith Tudor, M.A., M.Sc., CQSW, Dip. Psychotherapy, Certified Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy), Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy), is an associate professor and program leader in the Department of Psychotherapy, Auckland University of Technology, Aotearoa New Zealand. He can be reached at Keith Tudor, Private Bag 92006, Auckland 1020, New Zealand; e-mail: . The author is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this article; to Bill Cornell for his editorial facilitation and his suggestion of the term “two-person-plus psychology”; and, as ever, to Mick Worrallfor his contribution to the development of these ideas and their collaboration on this subject in the context of their writing and various publications on person-centered psychology.
 

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