Re-examining Empathy: A Relational—Feminist Point of View

For thousands of years people have been aware of the concept of empathy. In ancient Greece, philosophers expressed their understanding of "empathy" by the word empatheria, which implies an active appreciation of another person's feeling experience (Astin, 1967). In 1910, British psychologist Edward Titchener translated the German word "Einfuhlung" into empathy, literally meaning "to feel oneself into" (Bohart & Greenberg, 1997). In the 1950s, American psychologist Carl Rogers highlighted the importance of empathy in his client-centered approach to working with people. His description of empathy was widely adopted by social workers, giving common voice to its meaning in professional literature. According to Rogers (1951), it is the counselor's function to assume, in so far as she is able, the internal frame of reference of the client, to perceive the world as the client sees it, to perceive the client himself as he/she is seen by himself, to lay aside all the perceptions from the external frame of reference while doing so, and to communicate something of this empathic understanding of the client. (p. 348) Although empathy may be used differently in different models of practice and in different practice settings, current social work scholars consistently identify the concept of empathy as one of the critical ingredients in constructing a helping relationship in which the client feels understood and sustained by the worker (Hepworth, Rooney, Rooney, Strom-Gottfried, & Larsen, 2006; Shulman, 2006). Furthermore, empirical studies have demonstrated that empathy has been closely correlated with effective outcomes in social work practice. For example, Truax and Mitchell (1971) have shown that the failure to empathize with clients is a key error that leads ultimately to the client's premature withdrawal from the helping process. More recently, a review of 52 child psychotherapy treatment studies by an eminent university research team compared treatment groups containing "active" therapeutic interventions with those not containing active therapeutic interventions. The authors suggested that "nonactive" or "nonspecific" relational elements such as empathy, attention, and positive regard likely account for the great deal of unexplained variance in intervention outcomes. They concluded that these neglected variables are not only a necessary threshold for treatment efficacy, but may well be essential to enhancing it (Jensen, Weersing, Hoagwood, & Goldman, 2005). Perhaps because nonspecific relational factors are difficult to control in looking at indictors for change, the concept of empathy has received relatively scant attention in contemporary social work literature (Raines, 1990). The purpose of this article is to elaborate on the meaning of empathy and its role in the helping process in light of recent developments in feminist scholarship. Through the lens of relational-cultural theory--a new relational paradigm for practice originating out of the Stone Center for Clinical and Developmental Studies at Wellesley College--empathy is re-examined for effective social work practice. Relational-cultural theory, written from the standpoint of the life experiences and developmental processes of women and girls, moves social work beyond the more traditional unidirectional definitions of empathy suggested in social work literature, to a framework that conceptualizes empathy in an increasingly mutual, interactive, and humanist way. Relational-cultural theory evolved out of the work of feminist theorists such as Carol Gilligan, Nancy Chodorow, Mary Belenky, and others: work written by women about female growth and development based on clinical studies and observations of girls and women's life experiences. The relational-cultural approach applies these developmental theories to practice and is concerned with certain growth-fostering relational activities that are vital to the health of all human beings. …