The empathic imagination
- New York W.W. Norton c1989
- xiii, 171p.; notes; bibliog.; index
- A Norton professional book .
Part 1 - Toward empathy. 1 The uses of wonder. Part 2 - Imagining the inscape. 2 The sensory dimensions: on listening to a dream. 3 Pursuing the unique. 4 Active empathy: the dormant inscape. Part 3 - An extended search. 5 An extended search: fragments of a case. Part 4 - Imagining the self. 6 Reflections on world view. 7 Empathy with oneself. 8 Paradox and possibility. Epilogue - Beyond metaphor
'How does one begin to approximate the inner experience of another? This enigmatic goal, empathy, is at the heart of the workaday world of the therapist, and though empathy has been much explored in recent years, its fundamental mystery has been neglected. Beginning with an inquiry into the nature of wonder as a state of mind and a clinical stance, the author explores creativity in introspection, art and empathy. He then turns to investigate the phenomenology of empathy in everyday clinical practice, particularly in its projective and imaginative form. The journey toward shared intersubjective experience takes us to considerations of internal landscapes, the sensory parameters of personal world views, and the search for the unique essences of another....'