Getting serious about empathy in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy
Journal title PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE
Author/s Vittorio Gallese, Ugo Morelli
Publishing Year 2025 Issue 2025/3
Language Italian Pages 32 P. 463-494 File size 356 KB
DOI 10.3280/PU2025-003006
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This essay proposes a radical reconsideration of the concept of empathy in theory and in clinical practice, shifting its focus from a cognitive and representational conception to an embodied, inter-corporeal and transformative perspective. Far from being a simple relational technique, empathy is here understood as an original modality of affective co-experience, which emerges from the shared field between analyst and patient. Through a dialogue between psychoanalysis, phenomenology and neuroscience, the bodily foundations of the therapeutic relationship are outlined, and the interpretive primacy of the classical tradition is criticized. Empathy, as a form of aisthesis, makes possible a clinical practice centered on sensitive listening, affective regulation and co-construction of meaning. The essay argues that only a truly embodied paradigm can restore to care its relational, intersubjective, human and transformative dimension.
Keywords: Aisthesis; Embodiment; Empathy; Neuroscience; Psychoanalysis
Vittorio Gallese, Ugo Morelli, Fare sul serio con l’empatia in psicoanalisi e psicoterapia in "PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE" 3/2025, pp 463-494, DOI: 10.3280/PU2025-003006