Reflections On Empathy - Heinz Kohut

Kohut speaks in detail of his psychoanalytic and anthropological theory of the self. This program contains the conceptual foundations of both his therapeutic practice and his intellectual excursions into sociology, art, and history. His theory of the self was a further development and extension of psychoanalysis.

Kohut is indefatigable in stressing the role of empathy, that is, sympathetic understanding of the introspection of the Other. He intends empathy not only as a therapeutic agent, but also as an instrument of theoretical knowledge; in many places in Kohut's works it even becomes a model of social conduct.