Empathy in Phenomenological Psychology and Psychotherapy

Abstract

This study aims to focuses on the problem of access to other minds within phenomenological psychotherapy. The problem is that the Other is at the same time a phenomenon that is constituted by my consciousness and a transcendental subject located in objective reality. The author begins with the materials of the 1925 summer course of lectures given by Husserl in Freiburg, which set out the essence of the “new psychology” project. The new psychology should become an alternative to the natural-scientific approach, and should refer to direct individual experience. Therefore, it has intentional life as an object, refusing excessive theorizing about the psychological phenomena. The psychologist reveals the universal pre-experimental structures of consciousness through intuition, working with a priori forms. Empathy (German: Einfüllung) plays an important role in the work of a psychologist and psychotherapist. Husserl developed his concept of empathy through a rethinking of the theory of empathy by T. Lipps and understood it not as a mirror process, but as a projecting assimilation. Functional commonality allows you to create a bridge between the perceiving subject and the one who is perceived. Husserl’s concept of empathy became the basis for developing a number of productive therapeutic approaches. At the end of the article, two examples of such approaches are given: the phenomenological psychiatry of K. Jaspers and the method of subverbal communication of E. Gendelin.