Inclusive Cultural Empathy: A Relationship-Centred Alternative to Individualism

Abstract

Good relationships in psychotherapy emerge as a necessary but not sufficient condition in all research about effective mental health services. Good relationships depend on establishing empathy. Empathy occurs when one person vicariously experiences the feelings, perceptions and thoughts of another. Most of the research on empathy predicates the shared understanding of emotions, thoughts and actions of one person by another. In western cultures this is typically done by focusing exclusively on the individual while in traditional non-western cultures empathy more typically involves an inclusive perspective focusing on the individual and significant others in the societal context. I explore the reframing of “empathy” based on an individualistic perspective, into “inclusive cultural empathy” based on a more relationship-centred perspective as an alternative interpretation of the empathic process.