A brief conceptual history of Einfühlung: 18th-century Germany to post-World War II U.S. psychology.

Abstract

This brief conceptual history, modeled on Koselleck's Begriffsgeschichte, adds to earlier histories of empathy. It showed that Johann Gottfried Herder, not Robert Vischer, invented Einfühlung as an objective scholarly method during 18th-century absolutist-relativist disputes. Original 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century scholarly texts demonstrated that continued attempts to redress these disputes drove many of Einfühlung's conceptual transformations. Empathy first appeared in U.S. scientific psychology as a personal characteristic when relativists sought to redress the absolutist-relativist methodological dispute that began between John Watson and Edward Titchener. The conclusion notes limitations to this Begriffsgeschichte. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).