THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY

Toward Empathy: The Uses of Wonder

Alfred Margulies, M.D.

branch of philosophy which is the “study of man’s

How does one begin to approximate the inner consciously reported experiences” (2, p. 2599), would
experience of another? Empathic exploration seem to complement psychoanalysis and its emphasis
demands of the investigator the creative capacity to on the unconscious. Furthermore, the methods of each
suspend closure. The founders of phenomenology school are similar in the spirit of discovery infused into
and psychoanalysis developed methods to facilitate a the basic design of their investigatory recommenda-
process of not-concluding, ways of keeping the mind tions. The founders of both schools, Husserl and
open to new possibilities. Moreover, Husserl’s Freud, took care to provide the researcher with tools
phenomenological reduction and Freud’s basic rule of that could simultaneously clear the perceptual field
f ree association bear striking affinities to Keats’s and potentiate the acquisition of new data. The investi-
f ormulation of the nature of artistic observation. gatory methods, by their very nature, should resist
Keats’s quest for the heart of experience illuminates a routinization. They are self-renewing for observational
path through imagination and toward empathy. novelty.
(Am J Psychiatry 141:1025-1033, 1984) Experiencing freshly is, in a manner of speaking, a
technical concern for artists as well: How can the poet
continue to see the world anew and avoid dangers of
The word “precursor” is indispensable in the vocabu- observational stagnation, the tyranny of ideas, and the
lary of criticism, but one should try to purify it from every reduction to stereotypes and gimmicks? John Keats, in
connotation of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that each letters and personal remarks, is especially helpful in
writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our this respect. His struggle to articulate the creative
conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
process sheds light on the fundamental problem of
seeking the reality, the truth, of the other. Keats’s
-Borges (1, p. 243)
search for the internal experience of the other has
D rawing parallels between the works of one writer particular
and will lead
relevance to the psychological
us, at the end of this
investigator
paper, to the
and another becomes a surprising pursuit: The
question of empathy and the creative imagination.
parallels themselves assume a life of their own. One’s
way of reading changes; familiar words take on new Regarding empathy, Freud wrote that it “plays the
largest part in our understanding of what is inherently
meanings as the context of the reading evolves. Under-
standing bounces along on a dialectical journey, draw- foreign to our ego” (3, p. 108); it is the means by
which “we are enabled to take up any attitude at all
ing its energy from contradictions and defining itself
by its very movement from one problem to the next. towards another mental life” (3, p. 110). But, Freud
felt, the process itself remained a neglected and un-
This study began as a comparison of two introspec-
solved theoretical problem. Despite the mystery of
tive methods of investigation. Phenomenology, as that
how it occurs, many clinicians have long assumed that
empathy is a basic ingredient of psychotherapeutic
Received April 15, 1983; reviscdJulv 26, 1983; accepted Aug. 18,
1983. From the I)cprtmcnt of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. work. Nevertheless, empathy has only recently re-
Addri.,’ss reprint requests to Dr. i1argultcs. Department of PsyLhta- ccived much focus in the literature of pychothci’apy,
try, Harvard Medical School, tile (.ai’nhridge Hospital, 1493 Cam- almost as if its importance were bciiig rcdiscovct’cd.
bridge St., Cambridge MA U2139. For Kohut empathy became a cornerstone of his self
The author thanks Bonnie Margulies and Leston Havens for their
psychology: The “idea itself of an inner life of man,
dialogue and suggestions and Evelyne Schwaber, Sheldon Roth, and
Alan Dittrich for their comments. and thus of a psychology of complex mental states, is
Copyright 1984 American Psychiatric Association. unthinkable without our ability to know via vicarious

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TOWARD EMPATHY: THE USES OF WONDER

introspection-my definition of empathy” (4, p. 306). mind not only any judgment of value about the phenome-
Others are now beginning to clarify the complexity of na but also any affirmation whatever concerning their
empathy as a therapeutic process (5-8). cause and background; he even strives to exclude the
distinction of subject and object. . . .With this method,
This paper, however, did not begin as a study of
observation is greatly enhanced: the less apparent elements
empathy; empathy emerged as a surprising conse-
of phenomena manifest themselves with increasing rich-
quence of an exploration into the recommendations of ness and variety, with finer gradations of clarity and
three remarkable observers of experience. The journey obscurity, and eventually previously unnoticed structures
of this paper, then, begins with phenomenology and a of phenomena may become apparent. (9, p. 96)
curious similarity to psychoanalysis, moves to Keats
and his quest for the “negative capability,” and goes Whereas Freud’s studies moved to the inner borders
on to the nature of the empathic position. of the mind, where consciousness meets unconscious,
Husserl moved to the outer edges, where consciousness
merges with the realm of the senses. In probing the
CLEARING THE PERCEPTUAL FIELD conscious, Freud became aware of internal resistances,
defense mechanisms that he broadly grouped as “re-
In the history of ideas there is much to being in the pression.” Similarly, in his exploration of conscious-
right place at the right time. Ellenberger, in his fine ness, Husserl directed his rule of reduction to impedi-
summary of psychiatric phenomenology and existen- ments to “pure” precepts; here Freud would have
tial analysis (9), noted that in several externals Freud’s referred to the broad group of defenses directed
and Husserl’s lives coincide. They lived from the 1850s against perception, or the denial mechanisms. To para-
to the late 1930s; they published their principal works, phrase Merleau-Ponty (10, p. 83), the whole effort of
The Interpretation of Dreams and Logical Investiga- phenomenology is to recover a naive contact with the
tions, in 1900; and they shared a teacher, Franz world. How can one approximate the bare and subtle
Brentano, a philosopher interested in the nature of the essence of things?
mind’s constitution of “reality.” Ellenberger suggested Each school of psychology, of course, captures a
that Husserl’s method of the phenomenological reduc- different essence of the mind; each attempts to exhaust
tion is comparable to Freud’s “basic rule” of free the possibilities of its primary assumptions about what
association: Both techniques prepare the subject to put is important. Havens’ work ( 1 1 ) is invaluable in its
aside the usual biases to observation. Both investiga- exploration of the methods and data of the principal
tors knew that it is in the nature of the mind to resist schools of psychiatry. He stresses the intertwining of
certain explorations. the method used and the facts secured: The two go
But, of course, there were fundamental differences in firmly hand in hand. Each approach defines and is
approach. Though phenomenology was to become a defined by its field of interest, and each leads to its own
complexly intellectual field with its own forbidding brand of “truth.”
jargon, it originated in reaction to the raw data of Phenomenology and existentialism share a common
experience. As Merleau-Ponty, a student of Husserl, field of concern: the subjective and whole experience
put it: of the individual. Existentialism, with its emphasis on
a person’s unique relationship to freedom, responsibil-
To turn back to the things themselves is to return to that
ity, and meaning, finds it roots in the phenomenologi-
world prior to knowledge of which knowledge speaks, and
with regard to which every scientific determination is
cal interest in individual consciousness and world
abstractive, dependent and a sign; it is like the relationship view. Given the existentialists’ incorporation of phe-
of geography to the countryside where we first learned nomenology, we find that their “facts” merge into a
what a forest, a prairie or a river was. (10, p. 84) continuum. One such “fact” is the variety of ways in
which we refuse to experience the world or ourselves-
For the
clinician, one appeal of phenomenology was the self-deception, or denial, of our senses. An analogy
as a mode of access to the varieties of human experi- to another school of psychiatry might be of help in
ence. What was the world like for the schizophrenic, understanding this process.
for the compulsive, for the suicidal? How did time and It was Havens (personal communication) who first
color change for the depressed or for the murderer? suggested that the existentialists stand in a similar
These were worlds heretofore unexplored-even ob- relationship to “denial” as Sullivan and the interper-
scured-by the usual scientific approaches that inter- sonalists did to “transference.” Harry Stack Sullivan
posed “ideas” about the person. The inner life of the (12) was interested in how people distort one another,
other could easily be lost amidst all the “data.” how we bring omnipresent personal stereotypes into
Ellenberger described Husserl’s method, the phe- our social interactions, ready to spring them on our
nomenological reduction, as follows: unsuspecting neighbor. In many ways Sullivan’s inter-
In the presence of a phenomenon (whether it be an est in such distortion was an inevitable outgrowth of
external object or a state of mind), the phenomenologist Freud’s discovery of transference. To his dismay, Freud
uses an absolutely unbiased approach; he observes phe- found that patients in analysis regularly experienced
nomena as they manifest themselves and only as they him in a manner characteristic of earlier relationships
manifest themselves. . . The observer. . .excludes from his in their lives; Freud’s genius was to utilize such trans-

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 ALFRED MARGULIES

ference reactions as a vehicle for the treatment. It was to perceive intuitively, without thinking about perceiv-
Sullivan’s genius that pushed the concept of transfer- ing. Picasso purportedly claimed that it took him just a
ence to its limits, extending its implications into every- few years to draw like Raphael, but the rest of his life
day life-the idea of parataxic distortions. “Transfer- to paint like a child. Children’s eyes are fresh, and
ence” is not limited to the psychiatric consulting room. “primitive” artists have been valued for their ability to
In similar fashion, the existentialists extended the capture the world anew. “Knowing” what an object
implications of denial into everyday life. Denial, by looks like transmutes into what we actually see.
definition, is “an unconscious defense mechanism in Husserl’s objective was to shake patterned percep-
which an aspect of external reality is rejected” (2, p. tions, to clear habituated vision. Against every tenden-
2582). In other words, the individual unconsciously cy to the contrary, the phenomenological observer is to
refuses to acknowledge the perception of an external push aside all concepts, all knowledge, of the objects
fact that is threatening or painful. Implicit in existen- observed. The attempt to stave off such knowing
tial formulations of freedom, responsibility, and death Husserl called “putting the world between brackets,”
are notions of such defenses. Indeed, the existentialists an isolating of experience against the intrusions of
insist that there are universally denied facts of exis- cognitive distractions (15). MacLeod described this as
tence. For example, it is part of the human condition to “an attitude of disciplined naivet#{233},” the vision of a
balk at the thought of one’s individual obliteration. We trained primitive (16, p. 21). The world was to be
cannot bear it and spend part of our lives denying the “reduced” to pure perception, the “phenomenological
inevitability of a personal death. In this sense, denial is reduction.” Husserl’s rule, then, was simple and ardu-
omnipresent, just as are parataxic distortions in our ous: “In the presence of a phenomenon. . .the phenom-
interpersonal relationships. enologist. uses an absolutely unbiased approach; he
Collective denial states, by their very collective observes phenomena as they manifest themselves and
nature, are usually lost to us. It is one thing to shake only as they manifest themselves” (9, p. 96).
one’s head in understanding another’s refusal to face The reader might immediately take exception: This
the facts; it is something else to apprehend the denial is the “tabula rasa” notion in sheep’s clothing. Locke
inherent in culture or common existence. Denial of had compared the mind to a clean slate that is written
death is the usual state of affairs for most of us; it on by experience, a conception of the mind as passively
seems odd or morbid when a writer dwells on death receiving and organizing experience. Husserl seemed
for too long. Perhaps it is their strong objection to to be arguing that even if the mind is not actually a
consensual invalidation of experience by the mass of blank slate, the ideal is to behave as if it were.
mankind that gives some existentialists such a strident Perception is to be divorced from cognition. Many
quality. It is as if they are trying to shake us awake investigators have compellingly challenged such a no-
with their insistence on choice, freedom, and, of tion. For example, implicit in Piaget’s (17) work on the
course, death. And so too we might understand why acquisition of logical processes in children is the
some of the strongest voices of existentialism have interplay of the assimilation of information and the
come from those who have lived under extreme cir- accommodation of the internal structures of mind to
cumstances, for example, the Holocaust or near-fatal new input. Assimilation and accommodation, percep-
illness. It is the very uncommonness and severity of tion and cognitive schemata, mold one another; there
such life experiences that puncture our everyday com- are no “natural” perceptions apart from the organiz-
placency and neurotic preoccupations. ing mind. Karl Popper (18), too, has made forceful
The phenomenologists, however, pushed the con- arguments about the organizing quality of mind on
cept of denial further than the universal denial states. perception and on the advancement of scientific
Something akin to denial permeates even our nonemo- knowledge through the framing of falsifiable hypothe-
tional perceiving. Our very perceptual apparatus be- ses.
comes forever enslaved through experiences and Husserl was not so naive as to believe that the
“knowing”; we cannot help distorting our percep- phenomenological reduction was even possible. No, it
tions, given our knowledge. Phenomenologists were was an ideal, a beacon for the investigator’s navigation
trying for experience straight and without interpreta- into uncharted areas. It was Husserl’s acute awareness
tion. Phenomenology was to be a descriptive psycholo- that we, as active participants, must always construct a
gy, not an explanatory or “genetic” science (13). subjective reality (i.e., intentionality) that gave rise to
Wordsworth referred to “the meddling intellect” (14): his method. He was trying to deconstruct, to take
“Knowing” changes our relationship to the universe. apart bit by bit, the body of one’s elaborate contribu-
Once we have learned how a thing is supposed to be, tions to perception, systematically stripping experience
we experience it differently-and never again as direct- to the bone. Husserl compared putting the world
ly. Maturity places an obscuring veil of understanding between brackets to Descartes’ “attempt to doubt,”
between us and the world. even when all of knowledge tells us otherwise about
Artists are intuitively aware of such cognitive en- our perceptions. One works at it, identifying the
slavement. A recent popular book claims to train its assumptions that influence perception: “That we
readers to “draw with the right side of the brain,” the should set aside all previous habits of thought, see
side that does not know in a linear, logical way. We are through and break down the mental barriers which

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TOWARD EMPATHY: THE USES OF WONDER

these habits have set along the horizons of our thinking conceive of the self anew: in other words, the thera-
. .these
. are hard demands. . .To move
. freely along peutic application of creativity to the image of self, the
this new way. ..to learn to see what stands before our opening of new possibilities of self-perception. I will
eyes, to distinguish, to describe, calls. . .for exacting now turn to Freud and his radical conception of the
and laborious studies” (19, p. 8). tool of free association.
Perhaps the best one can do is to bracket one
hypothesis at a time in the manner of the experimental
technique of isolating variables. Merleau-Ponty wrote FREE ASSOCIATION
of Husserl’s injunction, “This reduction is the decision
not to suppress but to place in suspense, or out of Freud’s method of free association was originally
action, all the spontaneous affirmations in which I live, devised for reasons quite different from those underly-
not to deny them but rather to understand them and to ing the development of the phenomenological reduc-
make them explicit” (20, p. 56). The investigator’s tion. Freud was interested in the tapestry of the
struggle must be endless: The greatest teaching of the unconscious and wanted a method that would expose
phenomenological reduction according to Merleau- its threads. Hypnosis, in his hands, proved unreliable
Ponty is, in fact, its impossibility (10). and, with his new method, unnecessary. The uncon-
As a first approximation to his new method, Husserl scious would reveal its outlines if patients would say
borrowed Descartes’ “attempt to doubt”-but now “whatever comes into their heads, even if they think it
“only as a device of method” and with a new purpose unimportant or irrelevant or nonsensical. .not omit-
.

in mind: “to put out of action” the “fact-world” of ting any thought or idea from their story because to
obscuring theories (15, pp. 96-100). Indeed, unlike relate it would be embarrassing or distressing to them”
Descartes, Husserl was not doubting the world at all, (23, p. 251).
but attempting to return to the realness of experience This rule, the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis, is
itself. In this spirit, then, one might attempt to doubt also an ideal-virtually impossible. It has been said
or reduce even the most concrete phenomena, to force that when the patient can truly free associate, it is time
the imagination into consideration of what was a to terminate. Perhaps most of the work of psychoanal-
priori assumed impossible. As Husserl put it, “The ysis is analyzing why the patient cannot freely asso-
attempt to doubt everything has its place in the realm ciate, that is, analyzing the resistances to saying what
of our perfect freedom. We can attempt to doubt comes to mind. The patient is to put aside what he
anything and everything, however convinced we may knows or thinks is important and is to say everything.
be concerning what we doubt, even though the evi- The ideal is to suspend judgment.
dence which seals our assurance is completely ade- My analogy must now be evident to the reader. In
quate” (15, p. 97). One is reminded of Einstein’s suspending judgment about the contents of mind, the
extraordinary Gedanken, or thought experiments- analysand is being asked to “reduce” himself, to put
flights of the mind contradicting everything known himself as observer of himself “in brackets.” The
about physical principles. demand of the basic rule of analysis, that of free
Perhaps the reader objects to this train of reasoning. association, has marked affinities to the phenomeno-
Denial is a defense against an affect, a dynamic to logical reduction: One suspends what one knows so
prevent pain, but the phenomenological reduction that one might discover what one could not see before.
deals with perception, a less affective emphasis. It Both set the stage for perceiving familiar things in
would be wrong to say that perceptual modes, even if radically new ways; both raise possibilities of new
inflexible, are an extension of denial in any usual sense understanding.
of that word. Moreover, Freud extended his dictum of free associ-
This is, of course, true-except for the peculiar ation to the therapist as well. Not only were analysts to
problem of self-perception. When it comes to the self train themselves to free associate along with the pa-
objectifying the self, we are confronted with the similar tient in a state of “evenly hovering attention,” but they
problem of perceptual rigidity that has both cognitive were to apply an observational attitude remarkably
and defensive aspects and that is of considerable similar to the phenomenological reduction, a stance of
importance to therapists interested in the evolution of not-concluding. Freud offers a striking bit of advice:
self-change. Even the most indirect and supportive
psychotherapy must account for the person’s image or It is not a good thing to work on a case scientifically while
perception of himself, at once both an emotional and a treatment is still proceeding-to piece together its struc-
cognitive set of facts. ture, to try to foretell its further progress, and to get a
picture from time to time of the current state of affairs, as
Freud (21) and Edith Jacobson (22) discussed the
scientific interest would demand. Cases which are devoted
problems of self-fragmentation consequent to the ego’s
from the first to scientific purposes and are treated accord-
use of the mechanism of denial. The use of denial sets
ingly suffer in their outcome; while the most successful
the feeling self against the perceiving self, compart- cases are those in which one proceeds, as it were, without
mentalizing awareness and dividing the ego. I am any purpose in view, allows oneself to be taken by surprise
interested here in the problems of perceiving freshly by any new turn in them, and always meets them with an
and in particular of opportunities for the self to open mind, free from any presuppositions. The correct

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 ALFRED MARGULIES

behaviour for an analyst lies in swinging over according to Perhaps it is this receptivity to surprise that best
need from the one mental attitude to the other, in avoiding characterizes the investigatory ideals of both schools;
speculation or brooding over cases while they are in instead of imposing order we clear the field of precon-
analysis, and in submitting the material obtained to a ception. In Freud’s words about the parallel mental
synthetic process of thought only after the analysis is
attitude of the therapist to that of the patient, the
concluded. (24, p. 114)
therapist “allows [himself] to be taken by surprise by
The analyst is enjoined against any conclusions until any new turn.” May’s account of existential encounter
after the analysis is over: He or she is to remain of “an is filled with wonder. There is to be an “instantaneous
open mind, free from any presuppositions.” What a encounter with another person who comes alive to us
succinct summary of Husserl’s method! The analyst’s on a very different level from what we know about
attitude is to closely match the patient’s rule of free him.” What is sought is “a sudden, sometimes power-
association. As Ricoeur puts it, “Corresponding to the ful, experience of here-is-a-new-person, an experience
‘total communication’ on the part of the patient is the that normally carries with it an element of surprise”
‘total listening’ on the part of the analyst” (25, p. 409). (26, p. 37). This element of surprise is at the heart of
We can now describe both free association and the both the phenomenological reduction and free associa-
phenomenological reduction in relation to the creative tion-they were methods devised as first steps in the
or imaginative. Both processes have as their goal the process of discovering unthought-of possibilities. In
opening up of possibilities. Both demand the suspen- this sense, they are clinical methods that foster creativ-
sion of preconceptions in the service of discovery; such ity applied to the self, approaches that enable us to
suspension is characteristic of descriptions of the cre- grow from surprise. Such receptivity demands a capac-
ative process. Further, the processes are unforced and ity to tolerate uncertainty; here John Keats’s reflec-
unselfconsciously creative; they are not planned. tions are especially pertinent.
Recently a patient was terminating a therapy of
several years’ duration. Reminiscing, he told me that a
turning point of his therapy had been the telling of a THE NEGATIVE CAPABILITY
particular dream; then he recounted the dream with its
wonderfully evocative imagery and symbols. These In a now famous letter to his brothers, Keats wrote
were the last few moments of an intense relationship, that Shakespeare possessed the quality of a “Negative
and the dream once again recaptured the central Capability, that is when man is capable of being in
themes of the patient’s life. uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
With excitement I realized that the dream that he reaching after fact & reason” (27, p. 193). How
was now vividly recounting was significantly different accurately he captured the therapist’s and the poet’s
from the version so clearly related several years be- dilemma! This “irritable reaching” is what Husserl
fore-I had carefully written it down at the time. This and Freud were warning against; the ability to main-
new version of the manifest dream was a revised and tam an evenly hovering attention, to suspend the
richer edition. Most importantly, the elements were world, requires a negative capability, the capacity to
changed in such a way as to provide new insights not go against the grain of needing to know.
previously apparent to us. His, and my, associations The organizing, synthetic function of perception is a
were leading to fresh areas. As the therapy had fundamental feature of the mind. Perhaps this need for
evolved, our “facts” had evolved too. completion is built right into our neurological machin-
My point is this: There was no static truth to be ery. Kenneth Weiss (unpublished manuscript), wonder-
found by our investigation. The therapeutic truth was ing about Jungian archetypes and universal symbols,
a dialectic, a creation of the relationship itself, a once surveyed the literature on primate “art.” Are
continuous coming into being of possibilities requiring circles, crosses, and mandalas part of our evolutionary
further exploration. Even our hard-won therapeutic heritage, a primate “collective unconscious?” Would
facts had been transformed continuously. To use the chimpanzees given a chance to work at canvases
words of Ricoeur, the analyst “barely keeps ahead of produce forms of an archetypal nature? Indeed, the
the progress of the subjectivity he is helping in its chimps closed circles, filled blank spaces, and estab-
enterprise of recognition. The phenomenologist and lished symmetries. Whatever the interpretation of the
the analyst both realize that dialogue is endless” (25, p. data, they were not random scribblers; they reached
388). And he quotes De Waelhans: “From the point of for pattern completion and produced a humanly recog-
view of analysis, absolute knowledge is meaningless” nizable sense of form and balance. By innate design our
(25, p. 388). egos, minds, and brains organize our experience and
Each school must, of course, cultivate the clinical establish patterns of perception; Husserl’s and Freud’s
setting for its own unique data. It is my contention that injunctions are counter to this natural synthetic inch-
the working methods of phenomenology and psycho- nation.
analysis are alike in their relationship to the creative The recommendations of Freud and Husserl are
process. They are methods that optimize the potential comparable to the approach of artists and poets, who
for novel perceptions and thoughts; they permit the first take apart familiar forms, disassembling what we
surprise configurations of the new arising from the old. know. As Picasso remarked, “Every act of creation is

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TOWARD EMPATHY: THE USES OF WONDER

an act of destruction.” Perhaps this is one reason phenomenological reduction in which the phenome-
artists have always been feared by society. Certainly nologist “even strives to exclude the distinction of
totalitarian governments pay attention to what their subject and object” (9, p. 96). (After the completion of
artists are allowed to explore, lest they destroy the this paper, I came upon a fascinating article by Russell
wrong order. The curious psychoanalytic term “regres- Meares [31] that explores the conflict of “technical
sion in the service of the ego” (28) is a semantic neutrality” and empathy. Drawing on Keats’s observa-
attempt to capture such a reversal of the synthetic tions, the author compares the attitudes of the “imper-
function of cognition introduced by the imaginative sonal” psychotherapist and the “self-hess” poet. His
process and the consequent potential for destructive- thesis, though different, is consistent with several of
ness. Secondary process with its logical, universal my own ideas.)
order gives way to the relative anarchy of primary Both Freud’s and Husserl’s injunctions are first steps
process. To call it “regression,” though, seems mislead- in the creative process applied to introspection: The
ing. Regression reaches to the archaic and non-novel; therapist and the artist must first permit the world to
creativity demands an increase of possibilities, of solu- be taken apart, living with conceptual fragments and
tions untried. Surely creativity taps into a noncon- allowing uncertainty, before they can reassemble new
scious mode of thinking-but is that regression? structures. Otherwise, “if he follows his expectations
The negation of what is known, the negative capa- he is in danger of never finding anything but what he
bility, topples the familiar and, in this sense, is an act already knows” (24, p. 1 12). Freud emphasized that
of will and even aggression. Picasso, as an innovator, psychoanalysis was at once three things: a method of
established trends in art, simultaneously destroying investigation, a set of theories, and a treatment (32).
and building on what had preceded him. Ironically, he Perhaps he needed to remind us that the three psycho-
set the very context he would work against; in remain- analytic identities are not synonymous, or even neces-
ing creative, he continuously sacrificed his own work sarily compatible. The investigatory method by its
as well, breaking down what he knew and had already nature must always be set independently and, at times,
accomplished. One price of the continued growth of at odds with what is accepted theoretically. Both Freud
the creative imagination is an act of self-aggression and Husserl devised methods that should create a
through negation. dialectic tension at the very heart of their hard-won
Keats wrote of the poet: systems of knowledge. In the spirit of truth and
investigatory honesty, discord was ensured. Paradoxi-
A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; cahhy, the more one learns, the more one must be able
because he has no Identity-he is continually in for-and to put aside. The very design of these methods, if
filling some other Body-The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and adhered to, prepares the observer for the opportunity
Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical of perceptual novelty. The methods are inherently
and have about them an unchangeable attribute-the poet
creative and artistic.
has none; no identity-he is certainly the most unpoetical
of all God’s Creatures he has no . . . self. (27, p. 387)

On having “no identity,” Rogers (29) wrote of the IMAGINATIVE EMPATHY AND THE INSCAPE
therapist as being a “pane of glass,” almost not
existing. The analytic therapist, too, struggles for Keats’s “negative capability” was a first step toward
neutrality, hoping not to contaminate the treatment by opening his mind to new perceptions: “0 for a Life of
unnecessarily introducing personal elements. The ana- Sensations rather than of Thoughts!” (27, p. 185).
lyst requires of himself or herself the subjugation of How like the phenomenohogists he sounds: “A point
the phenomenohogists make consistently, namely, that
usual modes of human interaction, an abstinence
to know fully what we are doing, to feel it, to
imposed by the demands of the method.
This negation of the self by the therapist involves a experience it all through our being, is much more
kind of self-aggression: to submerge oneself, to submit important than to know why. For, they hold, if we
to not-knowing, and to put oneself aside. Perhaps it is fully know the what, the why will come along by
one component of the sometimes exhausting nature of itself” (26, p. 83). If only Keats could free himself from
therapeutic work-the therapist not only bears intense what he knew, he might experience freshly.
But, there is more, and here W. Jackson Bate’s rich
affects but also denies the self in the pursuit of the
other. Keats referred to the obliteration of the self of exploration of the life and work of Keats (30) is
the poet: especially enlightening. Emphasis on the poetic phrase
“negative capability” neglects a second stage. Perhaps
When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from in some lost letter there exists a term equally lyrical;
speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself for now, I must settle for the “positive capability.” The
goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the German word for such an affirmative process was
room begins to press upon me [sol that I am in a very little Einfuhlung, meaning “in feeling” or “feeling into
time annihilated. (30, pp. 260-261) something” (14, 30). There was no ready English
equivalent during Keats’s time; later Einfuhlung was
One is reminded of Ehlenberger’s description of the translated as “empathy,” which has since become a

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highly ambiguous and technical word for psychiatry. vigilance to maintain, of itself the negative capability is
Keats’s interest in empathy had to do with episte- merely preparatory, a precondition for the imaginative
mology. How did the poet come to “know” truth and and empathic process. It is as if one must clean or fine-
beauty? Keats was pursuing the goal of feeling himself tune the psychic instruments before one can proceed
into the reality of the other, as if to illuminate the further (34).
object contemplated from within. The goal of the A hard-won insight often seems obvious in retro-
poetic imagination was to chart the interior terrain, to spect. Why should the creativity implicit in empathy
establish the “inscape” (33). A friend described Keats’s come as a surprise? For many, the literary genius of
own sympathetic imagination: “He has affirmed that Shakespeare and Goethe lay in their extraordinary
he can conceive of a billiard Ball that it may have a empathic talents. In Keats’s time, the critic Hazhitt
sense of delight from its own roundness, smoothness, wrote of Shakespeare:
volubility & the rapidity of its motion” (27, p. 389).
Keats himself once remarked, “If a Sparrow come He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were,
or that they could become. He not only had in himself the
before my Window I take part in its existince [sic] and
germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow
pick about the Gravel” (27, p. 186). Another friend
them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable
was astonished at the details Keats would notice: ramifications, through every change of fortune, or conflict
of passion, or turn of thought. . . . He had only to think of
Nothing seemed to escape him, the song of a bird and the anything in order to become that thing, with all the
undernote of response from covert or hedge, the rustle of circumstances belonging to it. (30, pp. 259-260)
some animal, the changing of the green and brown lights
and furtive shadows, the motions of the wind-just how it
By its very nature, poetic empathy required imagina-
took certain tall flowers and plants-and the wayfaring of
tive and creative gifts. Moreover, though empathy was
the clouds: even the features and gestures of passing
a talent-to a certain degree one either had it or not-
tramps, the colour of one woman’s hair, the smile on one
child’s face, the furtive animalism below the deceptive it was one requiring development and training. The
humanity in many of the vagrants, even the hats, clothes, artist must work at it.
shoes, wherever these conveyed the remotest hint as to the Yet, in my own training as a therapist, I often felt
real self of the wearer. (30, p. 255) that though empathy was vitally important, it seemed
a more receptive aspect of therapy, a setting or “hold-
“Inscape”-the term might well have been claimed ing” function rather than an active, searching, and
by the phenomenologists-captures the goal of exis- even imaginative process. Perhaps my misconception
tential psychotherapeutic work: to enter into and to followed from the paucity of psychotherapy literature
share the world of the other. The existential worker, on empathic imagination. Even the current self psy-
like this young poet, strives to live for a moment inside chology literature often relegates empathy to a second-
the existence of the other. Rogers called it “the internal ary status-a prelude to the real thing, interpretation.
frame of reference” (29). Moreover, a genius of empathy in our field, Elvin
Elsewhere Havens and I have written of two broad Semrad, presented himself as a simple man not too
steps toward the goal of sharing the world of the other interested in big ideas; he was a farm boy from
(34). The first step is a proscription: “the setting aside Nebraska. His first-day recommendation to eager be-
of expectations or presuppositions, the avoidance of ginning residents in psychiatry was startling: Don’t
concluding about the patient” (p. 423). The second bother too much with reading during the first year or
step is empathy, the “imaginative projection of one’s two. How well he anticipated that for most of us our
own consciousness into another being” (Webster’s problem would not be how much we knew, but
New Collegiate Dictionary, 5th ed.). The affinities to whether we could stand to listen. Though I had no
Keats’s poetic and creative process are striking to me. words for it at the time, Semrad had us begin with a
The first step corresponds to the negative capability, negative capability. More often than not, what we
the second to Einfuhlung, or the sympathetic and thought we knew would only get in the way of our
creative imagination. The goals, too, are parallel: empathy. Our knowledge could be used defensively as
Engell describes the poet’s empathy as dissolving “the protection from what we could not bear ourselves. His
boundary between the objective, outside world, and very style, though, discouraged identifying with the
the subjective self. The imagination can, by a process creative and imaginative aspects of his genius-that
of identification, extend the self out into the world and was too highfalutin. Rather, we were to learn to sit
into other people. The result is neither strictly sub jec- with our patients, the royal road to empathy.
tive nor objective, but a fusing of the two” (14, p. I experienced Semrad as magical, and, as with all
159). talented artists, he was. Call it Einfuhlung, empathy,
For Keats the negative capability was a preliminary positive capability, humanity, or whatever, he had
step to Einfuhlung. The function of first suspending developed an unusual ability to feel himself into the
the self is to clear the perceptual field of those psychic souls of others. Watching him interview, even at those
elements in the observer that might impose an a priori times when he failed to make contact with the patient,
structure. Though such a state is actively sought by the was an opportunity to observe a true creative spirit.
poet/clinician and is one that requires a constant No talk was wasted; his words were aphoristic, quot-

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TOWARD EMPATHY: THE USES OF WONDER

able, and spoken directly to the heart. As Fhaubert Keats’s similar fear, Engell (14) writes of the “treason
remarked, “Why should the greatest compression of of imagination” and the poet’s need for continuing
thought always result in a line of poetry?” self-correction. So, too, the therapist may be projecting
his or her own inner experience onto the patient. What
may appear as the patient’s inscape may reflect more
IMAGINATIVE EMPATHY IN CONTEXT the observer’s own internal life.
I have returned full circle to the injunctions of
With some surprise I traveled from Husserl’s phe- Husserl and Freud. Their guidelines to the negative
nomenological reduction and Freud’s basic rule to capability have built-in feedback mechanisms against
Keats and the negative capability. From there the path such distortions. One must continue to put oneself
moved to Einfuhlung and inscape, or empathy. I have aside, attempt to doubt, even what seems clear and
stressed the imaginative and creative aspects of empa- obvious. There is to remain a constant vigilance to
thy, an area neglected in the literature of psychothera- countertransference phenomena in the broadest sense.
py. The therapist must strive for a position of tension
The focus of this paper has been on only one facet of between knowing and not-knowing. Empathy is not
empathy, a complex mental and interpersonal process merely a resonating with the other, but an act of will
that includes several phenomena under its umbrella. and creativity. As Hazhitt (30, p. 262) put it, “The
As Buie (5) has indicated, empathy might be dissected extremest resources of the imagination are called in to
into four components: conceptual empathy (emphasiz- lay open the deepest movements of the heart.”
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