NUR 1172 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Diane Johnson, Prentice Hall, Mcgraw-Hill Education
The Empathetic Response
Dr. James Gilbert
Diane Johnson
February 3, 2012
Document Summary
Empathy is a deep and subjective understanding of the client with the client. Empathy is not sympathy, or feeling sorry for a client. Therapists are able to share the clients" subjective world by tuning in to their own feelings that are like the clients feelings. Yet therapist must not lose their own separateness. Without loosening the separateness of their own identity constructive change is likely to occur. Empathy helps client pay attention and valve what they are experiencing and also modify their perceptions of themselves, other and the world. Empathy will increase the client confidence in making choices and in pursuing a course of action. (morris) Usually accurate empathic understanding implies that the therapist will sense client"s feelings as if they were his or her own without becoming list in those feelings. It is important to understand that accurate empathy goes beyond recognition of obvious feelings to a sense of the less clearly experienced feelings of clients.
