[Video] Carl Rogers on Empathy

[Daniel E.]

1974 lecture that is a companion to his paper "Empathic: An unappreciated way of being" (1975).

01-Carl Rogers on Empathy - YouTube

02-Carl Rogers on Empathy - YouTube

03-Carl Rogers on Empathy - YouTube

04-Carl Rogers on Empathy - YouTube

 

[Daniel E.]

Culture of Empathy Builder: Carl Rogers Quotes

 

[Daniel E.]

At the end of the video, he quotes himself:

On Becoming a Person

To the therapist, it is a new venture in relating. He feels, “Here is this other person, my client. I’m a little afraid of him, afraid of the depths in him as I am a little afraid of the depths in myself. Yet as he speaks, I begin to feel a respect for him, to feel my kinship to him. I sense how frightening his world is for him, how tightly he tries to hold it in place. I would like to sense his feelings, and I would like him to know that I understand his feelings. I would like him to know that I stand with him in his tight, constricted little world, and that I can look upon it relatively unafraid. Perhaps I can make it a safer world for him. I would like my feelings in this relationship with him to be as clear and transparent as possible, so that they are a discernible reality for him, to which he can return again and again. I would like to go with him on the fearful journey into himself, into the buried fear, and hate, and love which he has never been able to let flow in him. I recognize that this is a very human and unpredictable journey for me, as well as for him, and that I may, without even knowing my fear, shrink away within myself, from some of the feelings he discovers. To this extent I know I will be limited in my ability to help him. I realize that at times his own fears may make him perceive me as uncaring, as rejecting, as an intruder, as one who does not understand. I want fully to accept these feelings in him, and yet I hope also that my own real feelings will show through so clearly that in time he cannot fail to perceive them. Most of all I want him to encounter in me a real person. I do not need to be uneasy as to whether my own feelings are ‘therapeutic.’ What I am and what I feel are good enough to be a basis for therapy, if I can transparently be what I am and what I feel in relationship to him. Then perhaps he can be what he is, openly and without fear.”

 

[Daniel E.]

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."

-- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

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[Daniel E.]

Object relations theory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Numerous research studies have found that most all models of psychotherapy are equally helpful, the difference mainly being the quality of the individual therapist, not the theory the therapist subscribes to. Object Relations Theory attempts to explain this phenomenon via the theory of the Good Object. If a therapist can be patient and empathic, most clients improve their functioning in their world. The client carries with them a picture of the empathic therapist that helps them cope with the stressors of daily life, regardless of what theory of psychology they subscribe to.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Especially if the client can learn from the therapist to be patient and empathic with herself or himself.

 

[Daniel E.]

Review: Empathy and Mental Health by Arthur J. Clark

As a young man, Arthur J. Clark heard Carl Rogers speak and was inspired to devote his life’s work to applying empathy in education, counseling, and talk therapy.

empathyinthecontextofphilosophy.com

Empathy is much broader than reflecting feeling and meanings, examples are provided of empathic encouragement, empathic being in the here and now (immediacy), empathic silence, empathic self-disclosure, empathic confrontation, empathic reframing, empathic cognitive restricting, empathic interpretation...

“Empathy” is not so much a substantive as a modifier – a manner of being that applies across a diversity of ways of relating to the other individual...

Almost every major mental illness involves a breakdown of empathy. The patient experience isolation. “No one ‘gets’ me.” “No one understands what I am going through.” This is the case with most mood disorders, thought disorders, as well as those disorders typically described as “disorders of empathy” such as some versions of autism spectrum and anti-social personality disorders.