Articles Tagged "empathy"

Increasingly, clinical psychology literature points to a relationship between therapists’ self-regulation and their capacity to effectively treat patients.  Indeed, theorists have suggested that therapists’ self-regulation – including their capacity to be self-reflective and mindful with patients – tends to facilitate therapeutic empathy (Buechler, 2008), rupture resolution (Safran & Muran, 2000), and mutual recognition (Benjamin, 2018).  […]

The Complex Nature of Therapeutic Empathy Therapeutic empathy has long been identified as a particularly robust predictor of outcome (e.g., Elliot et al., 2018; Lafferty et al., 1989; Luborsky et al., 1988), yet its complexity has made it difficult to operationalize. Historically, some theorists have emphasized the sensory-emotional components (Kohut, 1959; Titchener, 1915), while others […]

The interpersonal difficulties experienced by patients diagnosed with a personality disorder (PD) can pose difficulty in negotiating a strong therapeutic alliance between patient and therapist (Muran, Segal, Samstag, & Crawford, 1994; Stern, 1938; Vaillant, 1992; Waldinger & Gunderson, 1984). For instance, therapists of patients diagnosed with Cluster B (i.e., “dramatic, emotional, erratic”) PDs often rate […]

What happens when a client recounts a horrible act of violence in which they were the perpetrator and for which they express enjoyment and a lack of remorse?  How do therapists react? Would they experience a lack of empathy or would they over-empathize in an attempt to connect with the client?  Current research suggests that […]

Microaggressions have been linked to reductions in psychological and physical health (Sue, 2010). The term racial microaggression is a term first utilized by Pierce (1970) to describe the subtle, jarring, typically automatic or unconscious, verbal and nonverbal exchanges; often perceived as understated, insulting “put downs” directed at people of color. Sue et al. (2007) did […]

By ‘augmenting human intellect’ we mean increasing the capability...to approach a complex problem situation...a way of life in an integrated domain where hunches, cut-and-dry, intangibles, and the human ‘feel for a situation’ usefully co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic aids. (Engelbart, 1962/2001, p.1) Psychotherapy is certainly a complex […]

Jeremy Holmes (2014) offers here a book, rich with the wisdom of an experienced clinician, that celebrates the imagination as an essential component of the psychotherapeutic process, using examples from literature to provide insight into important aspects of clinical work. He argues that literature and psychodynamic therapy share an “aesthetics” based upon a “paradoxical combination […]