S W 332 Chapter Notes - Chapter 17: Empathy, Self-Awareness
Document Summary
Self awareness refers largely in part to awareness of the various forces that are operating in the present. Social workers have numerous tools at their disposal to assist clients to gain expanded self- awareness Empathy has been defined as perceiving understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state of another person. Decety and jackson describe emotional empathy as the ability to be affected by a client"s emotions, whereas expressed or cognitive empathy is the translation of such feelings into words. The first component of empathy is affective sharing. The second component is self-awareness, so that the social worker recognized himself or herself as different from the person with whom he or she has empathy. The third component is mental flexibility requiring skills in both turning on receptivity and turning it off. There have been debates about whether empathy is primarily a personal trait or a skill that can be learned.
