10.1002@1520-6696(198401)20-1-38--aid-jhbs2300200106-3.0.co;2-1.pdf

Journal OJ rhr Hurory of rhe Behavioral Sciences Volume 20. January. 1984

THE HISTORICAL ROOTS O F CONTEMPORARY EMPATHY RESEARCH GERALD A. GLADSTEIN

Considerable differences exist in theories and methods in contemporary empathy research in psychology. An analysis is made of the ideas of early theorists in an attempt to identify the roots of these differences. Aesthetic philosopher-psychologists such as Theodor Lipps are compared to sociologists such as G . H. Mead, social psychologists, including Leonard Cottrell and Gordon Allport. the developmentalist Jean Piaget, and therapists such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers. This analysis documents the bases for empathy being viewed as projection, identification, emotional contagion, or role taking. It also suggests that current researchers should plan studies that tap more of the total psychological empathic experience.

In a recent article, Kenneth Clark argued that contemporary psychology has neglected the empirical study of empathy.’ By empirical study he meant research that measured empathy in some quantifiable way and collected data through either descrip- tive or experimental methods. In a response, I pointed out that considerable research has been carried out in the social, developmental, and counseling/psychotherapy fie1ds.l This activity is well documented by recent reviews in these three specialties.a However, an analysis of these literatures does indicate that each field approaches the study of empathy from somewhat different research perspectives. Further, they typically use different definitions and measures. These differences are especially important since empathy is a very subtle interpersonal phenomenon, in contrast to concepts such as specific aptitudes or isolated personality traits. In fact, psychoanalysts such as David Stewart and Heinz Kohut have argued that studying empathy requires a different scientific approach. However, the fact is that in psychology various methods have been used. For example, in social psychology writers such as Justin Aronfreed and Ezra Stotland have used physiological empathy measures. In the developmental studies Piaget-type tasks have been frequently used. In the counseling/psychotherapy research, ratings of audiotapes have dominated recent publications.‘

What has led each specialty to study empathy differently? Although it is not likely that we can establish a definitive explanation by analyzing their historical roots,6 I believe we can obtain a clearer picture of current research methods and findings. As Ernest Hilgard noted, when research focuses on one aspect of a total experience, “the account of psychological reality is incomplete.” e This seems to be the case with empathy.

In the following sections I will trace the ideas of the early empathy theorists. Because many psychologists did refer to aesthetic philosophers and sociologists,’ I shall first discuss these two roots. Then I will look at theorists in the social, developmental, and counseling/psychotherapy literatures.

As will become evident, empathy has been defined in various ways by these theorists. For the purpose of this historical analysis, we can define it as either (1) a cognitive process of understanding what another person is thinking or feeling, or (2) an affective process of taking on the feelings of another person. In this sense, empathy does not, by itself, involve feeling sorry for or helping another. The reasons for defining empathy in this way will become evident in the following pages.

GERALD A. GLADSTEIN is Professor of Education and Psychology at rhe University of Rochester. Rochester. N . Y . 14627. His research interesrs include empathy, nonverbal communication. and counseling outcomes. He is currently writing a book entitled Empathy and Helping that incorporates these interests as well as his experiences us Coordinator of the Universiry‘s Adult Counseling Center.

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THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY EMPATHY RESEARCH 39

EVOLUTION OF THE TERM “EMPATHY”: THE AESTHETIC ROOT Jpgen Hundsdahl has identified many of the early writers who used the term em-

pathy.e W. A. Listowel’ and Katherine Gilbert and Helmut Kuhnl’ traced the prescien- tific writers concerned with “aesthetic empathy.” These and other sources indicate that the unnamed empathic process was written about long before the term was used.”

For example, Aristotle in his Rhetorica explained how to convince people through rhetoric. Gilbert and Kuhn believed Aristotle was already familiar with the process of making the hearer see things. In Gilbert and Kuhn’s words, this process is “the projection of human feelings, emotions, and attitudes into inanimate objects.” l2 This process can be called animism or anthropomorphism.

It was not until the late nineteenth century in Germany, however, that scholars began to explore in depth the aesthetic empathic process. In 1912 Vernon Lee and C. Anstruther-Thomson summarized this development:

The discovery of the projection of our inner experience into the forms which we see and realize is the central discovery of modern aesthetics. It had been foreshadowed by various psychologists, and is implied in the metaphors of many poets. But it owes its first clear statement and its appropriate designation to Lotze, who, fifty years ago, wrote in his Mikrokosmos a passage destined to become classic in mental science.”

Apparently, the first definitions of empathy were based on the assumption that people are animistic, namely, they ascribe to objects and art, human qualities and characteristics. However, as will be seen later, other views of empathy were not based on this assumption.

In 1935 Melvin Rader indicated that several German scholars were interested in the empathic process, most notably Theodor Lipps. Rader argued that the “germ of Lipps’ doctrine of ‘einfuhlung’ or ‘empathy’ is to be found in various German predecessors,’’ I‘

among them Herder and Robert Visher as well as Hermann Lotze. Hundsdahl also referred to these writers and said that Visher, in 1873, was the first person to use the term einfihfung.16 In addition, Gilbert and Kuhn showed that from about 1870 on, the philosophical speculation about aesthetics gave way to the “new scientific method” (experimental empiricism) as represented by Gustav Fechner, Hermann Helmholtz, and Wilhelm Wundt. In response to this approach, a new school of thought “proposing the psychology of empathy (Einfuhlung) was needed to supplement the one-sidedness of the psychology of elements.” la In effect, Lipps and other scholars were responding to the “elements” school and proposing einfirhlung as the means by which people experience objects as beautiful.

Perhaps the most thorough treatment of these early scholars is in Listowel’s 1933 history of modern aesthetics. In addition to identifying and explaining the ideas of these writers, Listowel critiqued the whole theory of aesthetic empathy in comparison to other major aesthetic theories, pointing out its strengths and weaknesses.”

From all of these sources, it becomes clear that Lipps’s ideas evolved from a fertile, existing literature. (In fact, at the same time-and independently-Vernon Lee in 1897 developed her theory of empathy.) Apparently, Lipps’s major contribution was to approach the problem from a psychological, nonmetaphysical perspective and to use a phenomenological method to document his ideas. Thus, even though he was not the first person to use the term einfGhfung, his detailed and extensive writings (1897, 1903, 1913) led others to identify him as the creator of the concept. For example, in 1929 E . G. Bor- ing wrote of Lipps’s place in psychology: “His esthetic theory of Einfuhlung is famous,

40 GERALD A. GLADSTEIN

and is probably primarily responsible for the coining of the English equivalent, empathy, for the German word.” Here Boring was probably referring to E. B. Titchener, who did exactly that in 1909: “Not only do I see gravity and modesty and pride and courtesy and statelines, but I feel or act them in the mind’s muscles. This is, I suppose, a simple case of empathy, if we may coin that term as a rendering of Einfuhlung.” But nowhere does Boring indicate where or from whom Titchener obtained the term einfuhlung. The fact that Lipps’s ideas were known by 1909 (and not those of Lee, for example) probably led Boring to write what he did. However, Lipps’s ideas were more complex than Titchener’s reference to “I feel or act them in the mind’s muscles.”

Lipps’s View of Empathy One of the problems in describing Lipps’s view is that his early writing ( 1 897) was

restricted to the aesthetics of geometric forms while his later ones (1903, 1913) included human movements and emotions.20 Another problem is that only a few of Lipps’s writings on empathy have been translated into English. In fact, his major books, written in 1897 and 1913, have never been translated in their entirety. We have some excerpts that Lee and Anstruther-Thomson (1912) included, some from Edith Stein in 1917,*l and some that Hunsdahl quoted in 1967, but for the vast majority of Lipps’s writing, we must rely on writers who have read Lipps in German. Unfortunately, almost none of these writers have been contemporary psychologists. Rather, they have been philosophers interested in aesthetics (such as Wilhelm Worringer) or moral behavior (such as Max Scheler).22 Translations of these writers have also provided some of Lipps’s original words.

Despite these difficulties, I believe we can peice together Lipps’s views on empathy. As noted earlier, his early writing was concerned with spacial aesthetics. His first book, Raumasthetik und Geometrischoptische Tauschungen (l897), included 183 figures to il- lustrate his concepts. A sense of his analysis can be obtained from this excerpt quoted by Lee and Anstruther-Thomson from page 259 of the Raumasthetik:

When two lines are moving near each other in different directions, every one sees the movement of the second of these lines in the light of a contrary movement. If I see the principal arts of a buildin rising vertically, then every oblique line of the

this vertical movement. I seem to feel naturally in those vertical lines at the same time as in the whole building to which they belong, a traction of vertical movement.2s

Further on, Lee and Anstruther-Thomson give us an example of Lipps’s early overall view of empathy:

All such giving life to our surrounding realities comes about, and can come about, only inasmuch as we attribute to outer things our own feeling of force, our own feeling of striving or willing, our own activity and passiveness-Such an attribution brings outer things close to us, makes them more intimate and in so far more in- telligible.z‘

Clearly, this view of empathy suggests that an animistic process is involved. This is even more obvious in a somewhat later paper where Lipps provided a brief definition of empathy that emphasized the self-object relationship:

Empathy is the fact here established, that the object is myself and by the very same token this self of mine is the object. Empathy is the fact that the antithesis between myself and the object disappears, or rather does not yet exist.l6

building, whic K I see alongside o f or between them appears to me to oppose itself to


At another time Lipps wrote of the relationship between the “real I” and the “contemplating I ” in empathy:

In empathy, therefore, I am not the real I, but am inwardly liberated from the latter, i.e. I am liberated from everything which I am a art from contemplation of the form. I am only this ideal, this contemplating I. ,f

I n that same book, Lipps described how empathy is manifest between people: The imaginative, feeling, willing individual is immediately apparent to us through his sensuous appearance, i.e. his manifestations of life. In a movement, grief, spite, etc. is perhaps apparent to us. This connection is created through E i n f u h l ~ n g . ~ ~

Lipps also conceived of empathy as being both positive and negative. For example, Worringer quoted Lipps’s words regarding positive empathy:

If I can give myself over to the activity demanded of me without inward opposition, I have a feeling of liberty. And this is a feeling of pleasure. The feeling of pleasure is always a feeling of free self-activation. . . . It is the symptom in consciousness of the free union between the demand for activity and my accomplishment.28

Worringer then summarized Lipps’s idea of negative empathy: In the second case, however, there arises a conflict between my natural striving for self-activation and the one that is demanded of me. And the sensation of conflict is likewise a sensation of unpleasure derived from the object.2g

This conception of positive and negative empathy is interesting because it reappears with almost the same meaning in contemporary social psychology.ao

Perhaps these words from Lipps’s “Empathy, Inner Imitation, and Sense-Feeling,” written in 1903 and translated by Max Schertel and Rader, best summarize his overall view of empathy:

This activity is not objective. It is not anything that stands opposite me. Just as I do not feel active over against the object, so I do not experience joy over against my activity, but in it. I feel happy or blessed in it.

To be sure, my own activity may become objective to me, namely, when it is no longer my present activity but when 1 contemplate it in retrospect. But then it is no longer immediately experienced, but only remembered in imagination. And thus it is ~ b j e c t i v e . ~ ~

This belief that empathy is a subjective experience, and becomes objective (or known to the empathizer) only afterward, is also interesting because it suggests the first stages of empathy written about many years later by Stewart and Rogers.’’

Other Early Aesthetic Views of Empathy Several scholars prior to and contemporary with Lipps were also interested in em-

pathy. Perhaps the most contrasting views belonged to Karl Groos and Vernon Lee (pen name of Violet Paget). Their early writings emphasized the “motor mimicry” process.aa According to Listowel, Groos was the first great German philosopher of empathy. In his early writing he emphasized inner imitation “whereby we imitate internally the mental or material features of an external object.” Groos believed that this imitation literally involved “movements of the legs, the arms, the whole trunk, or the voluntary muscles of the face.” ’‘ In her 1897 article “Beauty and Uglyness,” Lee was greatly influenced by her friend Groos, and also focused on these movements. It was not until later that both modified their views. By 1912 Lee had incorporated Lipps’s criticism of her 1897 article


and eliminated total reliance on motor mimicry. However, even then she did not eliminate its role entirely:

It seems to me that we must take into consideration such mimetic-or anic sen-

associating movement and energy with objects and patterns, with mere shapes, of which we know that they cunnot move, and know also that, nine times out of ten, the real movements originally producing them . . . are either unthought of by us or of a kind exactly contrary (e.g. down instead of up) to that of the movements attributed to the forms by aesthetic empathy.*b

Three other contemporaries were also very critical of Lipps’s views. Worringer, writing in 1908, argued that artistic creation or the aesthetic process cannot be totally understood through empathy. He believed that empathy is important for some forms of art, whereas abstraction is important for others. People have urges for both:

We regard as this counter-pole an aesthetics which proceeds not from man’s urge to empathy, but from his urge to abstraction. Just as the urge to empathy as a pre- assumption of aesthetic experience finds its gratification in the beauty of the organic, so the urge to abstraction finds its beauty in the life-denying inorganic, in the crystalline or, in general terms, in all abstract law and necessity.“

In effect, Worringer rejected Lipps’s all-encompassing approach to explaining aesthetic experience. The notion that we have inborn urges to empathy (the organic) and abstraction (the inorganic) and that both are necessary for the total aesthetic experience is interesting since we see this dichotomy appearing many years later in the developmental psychology empathy literature and arguments pro and

Scheler’s disagreement with Lipps’s views were of an entirely different order. Writing in 1913, Scheler was primarily interested in sympathy, or “fellow-feeling” as he called it, and not in aesthetics. However, he found it necessary to criticize Lipps because he believed Lipps was completely wrong concerning our understanding of others:

Lipps has wrongly sought to construe this [identification] as a case of aesthetic empathy. Thus, according to him, the absorbed spectator of an acrobat in a circus turn identifies himself with the performer, whose movements he reproduces within himself, in the character of an acrobat. Li s believes that only the spectator’s real

the acrobat.ae

sations because they may possibly afford us a clue to the origin of the odd ! act of our

self remains distinct here, his conscious se PP having sunk itself completely in that of

Scheler then went on to point out the difference between being “one with” the acrobat and only “with” him, asserting that Lipps’s empathy indicates the spectator does not really identqy with the acrobat.

I n fact, Scheler used Stein’s ideas to support his disagreement with Lipps. Although Stein, who wrote her dissertation in 1916 under Edmund Husserl, agreed with some of Lipps’s ideas, she disagreed with many others. She saw empathy as the experiencing of foreign consciousness. However, in contrast to Lipps, the empathizer does not lose himself in the other:

The subject of the empathized experience, however, is not the subject empathizing; but another. And this is what is fundamentally new in contrast with the memory, ex- pectation, or the fancy of our own experiences. These two subjects are separate and not joined together, as previously, by a consciousness of sameness of a continuity of experience. And while I am living in the other’s joy, I do not feel primordial joy. I t does not issue live from my “I.” Neither does it have the character of once having lived like remembered joy. But still much less is it merely fancied without actual I i fe .se


Stein, like Scheler, was clearly concerned with human interactions. She also wrote of fellow-feeling (sympathy) as that which is “joy-with-him.” Thus empathy and sympathy are not the same things.

Scheler’s and Stein’s writings point up an important distinction that was evolving in the literature at that time. Whereas Lipps, Groos, Lee, Worringer, and others were interested in empathy as an aesthetic phenomenon, other scholars were writing about sympathy, fellow-feeling, altruism, and helping between humans. We shall see in the sections that follow that these other scholars’ views of sympathy, in some cases, were very similar to these aesthetic views of empathy.

Before turning to these other roots, however, I want to emphasize the main aspects of these aesthetic empathy roots and point out their significance for the psychological empirical research that came much later.

SigniJcance of Aesthetic Roors

First, scholars were interested primarily in understanding the aesthetic process-namely, why we experience something as beautiful. As the most comprehensive writer, Lipps also wrote about an observer’s empathic response to others. This was a logical extension of his interest in an observer’s response to statues of people. However, Lipps was nor interested in sympathy or people helping other people.

Second, this empathic theory of aesthetics was a countermovement to the “elements,” experimental empirical theory that existed from 1870 on. The empathy theory emphasized the subjective, whereas the elements theory emphasized the objective. This subjective focus later became modified to more of a combined theory of aesthetics.

Third, several basic ideas evolved from this empathy theory that reappeared much later in the empirical psychological literature. However, there is apparently no direct causal link, for these later researchers do not typically refer to these scholars or to their specific ideas. Rather, the researchers seem to come upon these ideas by themselves. It is conceivable that these ideas were so well accepted and in the general thinking of psychologists that recent researchers have felt no need to document their origins. Nevertheless, the aesthetic empathy roots of these ideas should be noted.

In particular, Lipps made the assumption of self-activation or will to action. He believed that people inherit an energy or faculty that leads them to empathize. (A similar assumption can be found in Rogers’s self-actualization force.) The aesthetic empathy writers (including Lipps, Lee, Groos, and Worringer) all agreed that people project their own feelings and thoughts onto inanimate objects and other humans. This appears to be animism. (We see this clearly in the work of Helene Borke in 197 1 .) Along with this, Lee and Groos also believed that, at times, empathy involved motor mimicry. Although most contemporary psychologists do not focus on this aspect, Stotland (1963, 1969, 1978) did look at similar physiological or emotional reactions (emotional mimicry). Martin Hoffman (1978) also suggested that “motor mimicry” may be “at least a possible mechanism of empathic arousal.”

Finally, these early writers (for example, Scheler versus Lipps) initiated the confusion that exists between empathy and As Lauren Wispe indicated in 1968, “it has been the conceptual ill-fate of sympathy and empathy that they have endured more by contrast with opposing ideas than by the clarity of their own exposition.” 41 The following section on the sociological roots of contemporary empathy research will give us a clearer picture as to why this “conceptual ill-fate’’ occurred.


SOCIOLOGICAL ROOTS At the tu rn of the twentieth century, sociology was evolving as a separate discipline.

Those who were interested in society and the process of individual socialization frequently drew on the ideas of the philosopher-psychologists. Charles H. Cooley was such a sociologist. I n his book Human Nature and the Social Order (1902), he wrote of the process whereby the newborn child becomes one with society. For him, “a separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals.” 42 In chapter four, “Sympathy or Com- munion as an Aspect of Society,” he developed his beliefs that sympathy is crucial to the creation of this functional society.

According to Cooley, sympathy “denotes the sharing of any mental state that can be communicated, and has not the special implication of pity or ‘tender emotion’ that it very commonly carries in ordinary speech.” 4s This “sharing of any mental state” certainly appears to be very similar, if not identical, to what Lipps, Lee, and Groos were writing about. This becomes even more evident when Cooley differentiates sympathy from compassion:

The sharing of painful feeling may precede and cause compassion, but is not the same with i t . . . . Moreover, it is not essential that there should be any real understanding in order that compassion may be felt.44

His conception of sympathy was further developed in a later work to focus on the inner response and emphasized human understanding and communion.

As you see another man do these things you repeat, sympathetically, our own inner

ience is opened to you and you enlarge your understanding of men . . . although our knowledge of people is likewise behavioristic, it has no penetration, no distinctively human insight, unless it is sympathetic also.“

response on former occasions and ascribe it to him. A new reach o ty human exper-

Cooley’s ideas are also crucial because his writings about the “social self’ and the “I” set the stage for other writers. By the social self he meant “that which is designated in common speech by the pronouns of the first person singular, ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘my,’ ‘mine,’ and ‘myself.’ ” 4e He then described in some detail how this social self evolved from infancy, its relationship to the environment, and the possible resulting incongruities.

These ideas were important to George H. Mead, the most frequently noted sociologist concerning the origins of the role-taking view of empathy. I n Mead’s classic book Mind. SelJ and Sociery, Charles Morris described the writers who influenced Mead’s views. In addition to G. W. F. Hegel and Josiah Royce, “Tarde and Baldwin had made many contributions toward a social psychology by 1900. Giddings had done his major work, and Cooley had begun his sociological career at the University of Michigan; Mead was a friend of Cooley and taught for three years in that environment.” 47

Cooley’s influence is most notable in Mead’s tracing of the development of the self from infancy. I t is also evident in his discussion of sympathy. However, Mead went beyond Cooley’s view. Whereas the latter said compassion need not require what he called sympathy, Mead assumed sympathy led to assisting others:

Sympathy comes, in the human form, in the arousing in one’s self of the attitude of the individual whom one is assisting, the taking the attitude of the other when one is assisting the other. . . , We feel with him and we are able so to feel ourselves into the other because we have, by our own attitude, aroused in ourselves the attitude of the


person whom we are assisting. It is that which I regard as a proper interpretation of what we ordinarily call “imitation,” and “sympathy,” in the vague, undefined sense which we find in our psychologies, when they deal with it at all.48

Further into this book, Mead elaborated on his views of sympathy and explicitly described it in role-taking terms:

. . . sympathy in the adult springs from this same capacity to take the role of the other person with whom one is socially implicated. . . . Sympathy always implies that one stimulates himself to his assistance and consideration of others by taking in some degree the attitude of the person whom one is assisting. The common term for this is “putting yourself in his place.”

At the same time, he differentiated sympathy from this “putting yourself in his place.” He added that this act, “this control of one’s conduct, through responding as the other responds, is not confined to kindly conduct.” 6o In effect, Mead reserved the term sympathy for when these were “kindly” reactions. Although he did not use the term empathy, we can see here the seed for the role-taking views that emerged later in the empirical psychological literature.

With Mead’s writing, the theories concerning empathy moved from the reactive- projective perspectives of the aesthetic scholars to a conscious, deliberate role-taking action. Mead’s differentiation between sympathy and “putting yourself in his place” (empathy) is also important because, as we shall see, current psychologists (for example, Aronfreed) are still trying to determine the relationship of these two processes.”

SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS The evolution of this role-taking view of empathy was further stimulated by one of

the two major streams in the social-psychology literature. Leonard Cottrell was very important in this regard. Among the writers he cited as crucial to his theory of “human social interaction” were Cooley and Mead. As part of this general theory, Cottrell in 1942 argued that the trait approach to understanding interpersonal behavior was inade- quate. I n its place, he described sixteen propositions that defined and explained self-other patterns. In proposition number two, he presented a description of a process between two people that he labeled empathy:

The impact upon one human organism, A , of the activities of another, B, not only stimulates and conditions a response pattern of A to B but also conditions in A the response pattern of B to A as A has perceived thar acfion, and vice versa. The latter pattern is not necessarily manifested overtly but must be assumed to exist at least in incipient or attitudinal form.

(This process of responding by reproducing the acts of the other (S) has been referred to by various writers as takin the role of the other, identification, introjection, sympathy, empathy, imitation). 8

We can see here the likely influence of writers such as Sigmund Freud, Harry Stack Sullivan, Jacob Moreno, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm, whom he also listed as significant to his own thinking. The fact that he used the term empathy suggests the effect of these therapists, for Cooley and Mead used only the word sympathy, even though they referred to this role-taking process.

Cottrell is also very important because of his ca1.l for new research approaches. He argued against the trait atomistic view and for “a situational frame of reference. . . .

46 GER‘ALD A. GLADSTEIN

Predictions of behavior must be made in terms of actor.” He also suggested that the researcher must learn to use empathy:

Perhaps the most important methodolo ical implication [of this new research approach] IS the one callin for skills by whic a an investigator can assimilate himself to the acting perspective o f his subject, individual or group. Such skills are sometimes referred to as intuition, sympathetic or empathetic introspection, identification- projection, role-taking, etc.’*

Esther Dymond, among others, was very influenced by these suggestions and began a major research stream in 1948 that continues to this day.

The second major social-psychology root came from an entirely different set of assumptions and beliefs. In fact, it is similar to the aesthetic root but originated from different interests. Wundt, primarily a physiological psychologist, ventured into this area in his philosophical treatise on ethics. Written in 1886, revised in 1892, and translated in three volumes between 1897 and 1914, Ethics: An Investigation of the Laws of the Moral Life included Wundt’s beliefs about sympathy, which he discussed in the context of man’s social development. He believed that sympathy is “one’s own emotions, grown objective,” and that “when expression of emotion in another is felt as an objectified dis- turbance of one’s own subjective state,” sympathy is present.“ This view is certainly very similar to the process Lipps wrote about. However, in this instance, instead of the empathizer projecting his or her emotions onto the object, the other person’s emotions are taken into the empathizer.

William McDougall was another early scholar of this emotional reaction or contagion view of empathy. In An Introduction ro Social Psychology, written in 1908, he sought to explain how “certain innate tendencies” that were important in social life-but which were not true instincts-affected individuals and groups. One of these innate tendencies he labeled sympathy and defined it as “a suffering with, the experiencing of any feeling or emotion when and because we observe in other persons or creatures the expression of that feeling or emotion.” He noted that this view was the same as Herbert Spencer’s.

Further on, he added that human sympathy can also include reactions to positive emotions. “Laughter is notoriously infectious all through life, and this, though not a truly instinctive expression, affords the most familiar example of sympathetic induction of an affective state.” ‘I His emphasis on the emotions as a basis for simple sympathy (as he called it) is clearly seen in this passage: “In short, each of the great primary emotions that has its characteristic and unmistakable bodily expression seems to be capable of being excited by way of this immediate sympathetic response.” ”

Later in the same book, McDougall added another term in an effort to connect emotional reactions to reciprocal relations between people. He said that “active sympathy” is different from the “simple, primitive, or passive sympathy” because it “is of prime importance for the development of the sentiment of affection between equals.” When a person actively seeks the sympathy of another, “and when he has communicated his emotion to the other, he attains a peculiar satisfaction which greatly enhances his pleasure and his joy, or in the case of painful emotion, diminishes his pain.” 68

McDougall theorized that this active sympathy was an important adjunct to altruism, being valuable in “stimulating social co-operation for social ends.” ’@

Thus, even though McDougall was interested in the emotional reactions of one person observing another, he differed from the aesthetic empathy scholars in his focus on


their significance for social relationships. In this sense, he was similar to Scheler, who was also interested in “fellow-feeling,” that is, human relations. Scheler also rejected mere “emotional infection” as being sufficient to account for full syrpathetic relations.m

Another early social psychologist who wrote about emotional reactions and sympathy was Floyd H. Allport. However, he differed greatly from Wundt and McDougall, as well as from Scheler and Lipps. In 1924 he made a radical departure from the existing theories, arguing that conditioning, rather than instincts, formed the basis for sympathetic behaviors. Relying on available empirical studies of responses to facial ex- pressions to discount McDougall’s instinct-based theory, Allport summarized his views of sympathy in these words:

We may conclude briefly as follows: (1) Sympathy is not an instinctive process; there is no direct innate effect of the emotion as expressed in one individual upon the emotional response of another. (2) The emotion aroused in the sympathizer is not necessarily a replica of that in the person who affords the stimulus. (3) The emotion aroused in the sym athizer is a part of his own system of emotional habits from past

original and the present situations. (4) Sympathy makes for better understanding in human adjustments, but it is not necessarily conducive either to altruism or to social just ice .‘‘I

It is interesting to note that one of these views was similar to Lee’s idea that an individual’s empathic responses were based on past experiences: this aesthetic empathizer connected her observations of an object to emotions experienced during prior observations.02 Thus, even though Allport was describing “sympathy” and Lee was writing about “aesthetic empathy,” they both believed prior learning affected the empathic experience.

Allport’s interest in altruism and social justice, of course, did differ from Lee’s interests. In this sense he was similar to Scheler, Cooley, Wundt, McDougall, and Mead. However, it was his conditioning perspective that current empirical social psychologists, interested in empathy as emotional reaction, have used in their own research.6s

In 1958 another social psychologist, Fritz Heider, developed a theory of interpersonal relations that also looked at emotional reactions and their relationship to sympathy. In chapter eleven of his Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, entitled “Reaction to the Lot of the Other Person,” he schematically distinguished four types of reactions we can have to the lot of the other person. He also said that the “reactions of the sympathizer must be differentiated from those of the person with whom he is sympathizing . , . [by] distinguishing pure sympathy from emotional contagion.” He then defined emotional contagion as “an emotion in o [other] simply produces an emotion in p” [perceiver]. While he accepted the notion that “cognitive elements” may be present, they were not dominant.’”

He then argued that “true sympathy has as its object the feeling of sorrow and joy in the other person; i.e. it is directed towards the feelings of the other person. It is not sufficient that it merely takes place in the presence of another’s sorrow or joy alone.” In the context of his own schema, he explained that

in the true sympathy relation, p often does a good job of gauging the appropriate level of emotional responsiveness by virtue of the fact that the feelings of the other person are his main concern. He is able to sense, therefore, when hls sympathetic responses are too strong for o to take, or perhaps not sufficiently expressive to convey a feeling of real sympathy.”’

experience, evoke I f as a conditioned response to some element common to the


This same concept has been explored empirically by contemporary social psychologists. Sometimes the phenomenon is labeled empathy, sometimes sympathy. This again highlights the semantic confusion in the literature.“

In summary, social psychological theorists created two branches of empathy research: role taking and emotional reaction. The role-taking theoretical stream led immediately into empirical research. In 1949, Cottrell and Dymond launched a research paradigm that led to numerous studies and is still being used today.B’ However, for whatever reasons, the emotional reaction theoretical stream remained dormant until the mid-1960s. As Bibb Latant and John Darley have pointed out, a stark, violent 1964 murder witnessed by thirty-eight unaiding neighbors alerted researchers to the problems of social indifference.w Since then dozens of studies of altruism, aiding, helping, and so forth have been carried out. Many of these have used the emotional reaction or contagion response as a starting point. In almost all, empathy has been involved as an important variable, or assumed to be underlying the helper’s behavior.”

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGICAL Roors Jean Piaget, the only clearly identifiable, early writer in developmental psychology,

did not believe that decentering (the term that came the closest to empathy in his early writings) could be separated into intellectual and emotional processes, but rather that they were Piaget’s ideas were greatly influenced by James M. Baldwin and his 1897 book, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Study in Social Psychology, and in particular by Baldwin’s views of the child’s developmental stages.”

Baldwin wrote that there were three stages of growth: (1) perspective-distinguishing persons from things (experiencing outside stimuli); (2) subjective-through imitation the child assimilates other experiences; and (3) ejective-the child becomes aware of other selves (this is the social self; he is then aware of ego and alter, whereas before they were one).?* Certainly, we can see here a relationship to Piaget’s concepts concerning the need for nonegocentric behaviors as presented in his Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, written in 1928. There he described egocentrism as the inability to view the world from another’s viewpoint and pointed out that the child needed to go beyond egocentrism. In effect, he wrote that Baldwin’s “ejective” stage is thwarted by egocentric thinking. This was probably Piaget’s major difference with Baldwin’s ideas.’s

Baldwin’s views of sympathy also influenced Piaget. According to Baldwin, there are two types of sympathy: (1) the organic, which is instinctive, immediate, and animal like, and (2) the reflective, which occurs after thought develops. Organic sympathy can occur at any developmental stage and is “an inherited organic manifestation.” “ Reflec- tive sympathy is “distinctly a social outcome. It is the inevitable result of separateness created between the ego-self and the object-self. If there were no alter thought, there could be no reflection, and with it no sympathy.” Baldwin also pointed out that in cases of high sympathetic excitement the sympathizer can be confused regarding his own iden- tity and think the suffering is really his own.’6 In Piaget’s terms, egocentrism exists and no decentering occurs.

Some of Piaget’s views on sympathy can be found in The Moral Judgment of the Child. He assumed (as did Baldwin) that sympathy is present in the child and argued that “the child’s behavior towards persons shows signs from the first of those sympathetic tendencies and affective reactions in which one can easily see the raw material of all sub- sequent moral behavior.” ‘O Thus, these tendencies were assumed to be present (similar to Baldwin’s organic sympathy). Only with decentering can the child turn these reactions

T H E HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY EMPATHY RESEARCH 49

toward others. There must be certain norms that "impress a given structure and rules of equilibrium upon the material." "

Although Piaget did not write specifically about empathy, these ideas about sympathetic tendencies, egocentrism, and decentering were used by later developmental psychologists in their empirical studies.'' They labeled the process empathy and role taking. They, and many other recent developmentalists, refer back to Piaget's ideas. In particular, they quote Piaget as saying that the child below the age of seven or eight "experiences the greatest difficulty in entering into anyone else's point of view." ''

Thus, it is with Piaget that we have the major grounding for the developmental psychologists' views of empathy. However, I must note in passing that the current non- Piagetian developmentalists also study empathy, but their roots can be traced primarily to the social-psychology models referred to earlier. In fact, a writer such as Hoffman i l - lustrates well a non-Piagetian perspective on empathy."O

In summary, the developmental psychological origins picture empathy as a cognitive-affective phenomenon. The child can be empathic (taking another's role or perspective) only after egocentrism has given way to decentering.

COUNSELING/PSYCHOTHERAPY ROOTS We have already seen how some of the early psychotherapists' interests in empathy

affected the evolution of the concept's social-psychological roots. Even the aesthetic theorists noted Freud's ideas concerning emotional identification."' However, for the most part, the counseling/psychotherapy ideas evolved independently. In fact, it is rare to find any reference at all by the early counseling/psychotherapy empathy theorists to the other existing foundations. (A notable exception to this is the 1963 review paper by Arnold Buchheimer in which he did try to connect the aesthetic, social-psychological, and developmental writers to the counseling/psychotherapy empathic process.)B2

The reasons for this independent evolution are unclear. but it seems reasonable to speculate that the counseling/psychotherapy theorists came onto empathy from their own practical, clinical experience. By contrast, the other scholars came from metaphysical or pre-empirical scientific sociological or psychological origins. These clinical experiences led Freud and Rogers, for example, to theorize about dynamics they observed in people's behavior and in the therapeutic encounter.ea Without realizing it, these clinicians were describing empathy in ways that were somewhat similar to the existing literature. Because of their particular vantage point, however, they also developed ideas that were quite different. All of these ideas focused on either the identification or the role-taking aspects of empathy. Accordingly, I have grouped these theorists into two major streams.

The Identification Stream The beginnings of this stream appear to rest with Freud. The earliest writing that

specifically refers to empathy seems to be his 1922 volume Group Psychology and rhe Analysis of rhe Ego. We can infer an earlier concern with empathy as part of the therapeutic interview, but this is based only on his emphasizing the place of understanding in the helping process, For example, in writing about establishing rapport with the patient, he said:

It is possible to forfeit this rimary success [good rapport] if one takes up from the

perhaps, or if one behaves as the representative or advocate of some third person, maybe the husband or wife, and so on.''

start any standpoint other t g an that of understanding, such as a moralizing attitude,


His real interest in empathy was in terms of the identification process. “ldentifica- tion is known to psycho-analysis as the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person.’’ He believed that the ego “assumes the characteristics of the object” 116 and that “in a regressive way it becomes a substitute for a libidinal object tie, as it were, by means of the introjection of the object into the ego.” O’ He added that identification can occur with some person “who is not an object of the sexual instinct.” M,

We can see here why some of the aesthetic empathy writers were interested in Freud’s ideas. This “introjection” of the object (person) into the ego or self was another way of trying to account for the losing of oneself in another. Lipps, however, argued that this process means we project onto the object our feelings and thoughts. Scheler used Freud’s ideas to support his views concerning one type of sympathy, which he said went beyond Lipps’s aesthetic empathy.Og

Freud’s ideas concerning identification also came into his attempts to explain the mutual tie between members of a group and their leader. It is here that he specifically referred to “the process which psychology calls ‘empathy [Einfuhlung]’ and which plays the largest part in our understanding of what is inherently foreign to our ego in other people.”@0 However, he did not go on to explain what he meant. Nor did he indicate from whom he obtained the term einfuhlung. Nevertheless, it is clear that he believed ein- fihlung could help explain leader-group members’ behavior beyond what “identification” could explain. In a footnote he briefly attempted to trace the process of “group formations”: “A path leads from identification by way of imitation to empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by means of which we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another mental life.” So Freud saw empathy as the third part of a process whereby one person can take on the attitude (or feelings) of another person.

Freud’s focus on the identification process is reflected in several of his followers and their interests in empathy. Sullivan, Theodor Reik, Stewart, and Kohut are probably the four writers who most fully developed Freud’s original ideas.“

Sullivan’s theory of the interpersonal basis of personality development described the early interactions between the “mothering one” and the child. He proposed that the basic issue in life is dealing with anxiety and that this goes back to the infant’s first fears or anxiety resulting from “emotional disturbances of certain types in the significant person-that is, the person with whom the infant is doing something.” He then added that in later life this anxiety is revived by various situations.

Sullivan also put forth a theorem regarding how the infant becomes anxious through empathy: “The tension of anxiety, when present in the mothering one, induces anxiety in the infant.” He admitted, however, that the way this process occurs is “thoroughly obscure,” but then explained it by “referring to it as a manifestation of an in- definite-that is, not yet defined-interpersonal process to which I apply the term empathy.” @*

Several points should be brought out here. Sullivan noted that others might disagree with this theorem but he believed it could be proven by research. It is not clear how Sullivan derived this theorem or from whom he obtained the term empathy. We can assume that, as a follower of Freud’s, he was aware of Freud’s discussion of empathy in terms of the group. However, Sullivan does not give any documentation here. It would

51 THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY EMPATHY RESEARCH

appear that his ideas were based on his own clinical experiences, as can be inferred from his example of a mother describing her fifteen-month-old child

holding his obviously “excited” genital. She is filled with a shuddering “emotion” not unrelated to the fascination and horror many people encounter when first thinking about. . , . Sexual Evil. Parenthetically, the infant by empathy is filled with the most primitive anxiety, almost as paralyzing and as uninformative as a blow on the head of a hammer.M

This description suggests the emotional contagion perspective of empathy of McDougall, Allport, and Heider discussed earlier.

In contrast to Sullivan, Reik’s interest in empathy was centered in the therapeutic encounter. The Freudian influence can be seen in his emphasis on the unconscious processes that occur between the therapist and the patient. Although Reik did not refer specifically to the term einfchlung or empathy, he wrote that the “comprehension of another person is a special case of this sublimated seizure and incorporation. It is in a sense psychological cannibalism. The other person is taken into your ego and becomes, for the time being, .a part of your ego.”“ This view is certainly similar to Freud’s description of identification-imitation-empathy, noted above. Reik explained this idea more

The anal st must oscillate in the same rhythm with his patient within the realm

He vicariously lives his patient’s experiences and at the same time looks upon them with the factual regard of the investigator. He dives with the patient into the life of old and new experiences, but at every moment he is ready to regain the safe shore of psychological observation.m

This “vicariously” living the patient’s experiences and at the same time observing them as a factual “investigator” certainly goes beyond the aesthetic empathy theories of Lipps or Worringer, and it is also different from Cooley’s sociological ideas. However, we do see here some allusion to role-taking concepts. Yet, these are not the conscious, deliberate activities of the therapist, as evident, for example, in Rogers’s writings. Reik was still reflecting his belief in the unconscious and how the therapist can use this while listening “with the third ear.” Thus, Reik combined the emotional identification process with some distancing between the analyst and patient.

Although Reik did not label this process “empathy,” Stewart did. In fact, we have in Stewart’s Preface to Empathy a major development of Freud’s ideas combined with an incorporation of some of the beliefs of Lipps and Scheler. Stewart also related these views to ethical behavior and argued that through empathy we learn more about ourselves. His formal definition of empathy displays these multiple origins:

fully:

between r antasy and reality, sometimes approaching one, sometimes the other. . . .@’

Empathy is deliberate identification with another, promoting one’s knowled e of the

may imagine, curbed by the other’s responses, to be something similar to one’s own experience. Empathy is therefore both a process of intuition and the basis of dynamic inference. It is felt to be ethical because it is grounded in feeling, presup- poses goodwill, and strives for mutual understanding. It is seen as a sound psychological concept, because the process it stands for produces our most authentic and genuine personal experiences. It is esthetic in its creative and selective activities.w

In the same book, Stewart quoted Freud extensively concerning the latter’s views of identification, transference, the unconscious, and the therapist’s role. And yet, he went

other as well as oneself in striving to understand what is now foreign but w a ich one


beyond Freud. For Stewart, empathy was helpful in therapy but equally so in day-to-day living. The average person could learn more about himself or herself-that is, “personal knowing.” He argued that empathy-a deliberate process-could improve our own iden- tity because we see in others what differentiates them from us. He even believed that through empathy we can “know” art and ourselves better. His use of Lipps’s ideas is evident in the following passage:

Our role as appreciators of art does not differ in kind from the relation of the artist to his own work. We identify with his forms, as he had to, and yet we stand apart to get the objectivity we need in order to say we understand it, or feel it, or know it, or whatever we want to do to express ourselves with relation to it. . . . We are certain, for example, that in creating an image, either as artist or as appreciator, we endow the image with the stuff of our personal life.’O0

In addition, Stewart argued that traditional scientific “knowing” was not sufficient concerning human behavior. Empathy is needed, he said, in order to really understand persons and “the psychologist as personal knower must in some degree identify with the person he wants to know in addition to knowing him as a chemist knows chemicals, i.e., by scientific method” lo’

Stewart’s belief in empathy as a multifaceted process having tremendous potential for human understanding and good certainly separates him from all the other aforemen- tioned theorists. Although Lipps, Scheler, Cooley, Mead, McDougall, Freud, and others saw empathy (sometimes labeled sympathy) as an important aesthetic or interpersonal phenomenon, none wrote of its overriding importance as Stewart did. Even Katz’s later Empathy: Its Nature and Uses-though interdisciplinary in nature-did not take such a strong position.102

However, more recently Kohut has viewed empathy as not only crucial in psychoanalysis but important to human relationships in general.loS As the most recent comprehensive psychoanalytic writer about empathy, Kohut brought Freud’s original views of empathy, as based in identification, to a contemporary perspective. He emphasized how the analyst can use empathy, “the human echo to human experience,” lo‘ to help the patient discover his or her self, and focused on the patient’s need to move beyond nar- cissism.

The Role-Taking Stream Of the counseling/psychotherapy writers who emphasized the role-taking view of

empathy, Rogers has probably been the most influential. He saw it as only one of several crucial aspects of therapy. However, in order to understand his theory, we must briefly look at two therapists who preceded him, Otto Rank and Jessie Taft, from whom Rogers obtained a unique perspective of the therapeutic process.

Rank wrote about “will therapy” in contrast to classical psychoanalysis, in which he was originally trained.lo6 By “will” he meant a unique source of energy that facilitates health. This “will-to-health” struggles with its counterwill; the therapist’s job is to be on the side of the counterwill so that the patient can act on his or her will. Moreover, it is the “therapeutic experience” or situation that is very important, not the patient’s past history, dreams, and so forth. Although Rank did not ignore these aspects, in contrast to Freud he focused on the therapeutic encounter. “Everything depends on the understanding and correct management of the therapeutic situation and this lies in the essential understanding and guiding of the individual reactions of the patient.” loo


Taft was greatly influenced by Rank and developed his ideas into what she called “relationship therapy,” wherein the emphasis is on forming a relationship in which the forces or will of the patient can function. She emphasized “understanding” and “acceptance,” not interpretation or analysis.

As I conceive it, the therapeutic function involves the most intense activity but it is an activity of attention, of identification and understanding, of adaptation of the individual’s need and pattern, combined with an unflagging preservation of one’s own limitation and differen~e.’~’

She also indicated the importance of the therapist, as a person, in this relationship: In my opinion the basis of thera y lies in the therapist himself, in his ca acity to per-

chological insight and technical s k i F m

As Rogers worked with children and their parents he looked to others for new ideas. He became frustrated with the traditional clinical methods and tried new ones-some out of his own experience, some from other therapists.lm Rank’s and Taft’s assumptions and beliefs became the cornerstone for his “nondirective,” or “client-centered,” therapy. Rogers paid tribute to them and almost unconsciously integrated their ideas with his.”O Their “will-to-health” apparently became his “self-actualization force.” Their focus on the “therapeutic experience” agreed with his “therapeutic relationship.” Taft’s emphasis on “understanding” apparently became his “empathic understanding.”

However, it does not seem possible to document exactly when Rogers began to use the term empathy or empathic understanding, Although as early as 1940, in a paper entitled “The Process of Therapy,” he indicated the therapist should help the client to recognize and accept his own feelings, he did not use the word empathy.”’ In that same paper, Taft’s influence is evident, however, in Rogers’s statement that the purpose of the therapist is “to release and strengthen the individual, rather than to intervene in his life.” ”* We can also see the traces of his earlier Freudian clinical training in his discussion of rapport in the therapy session. To develop this rapport, he argued,

there must be on the part of the counsellor a genuine interest in the individual, a degree of identification which is none the less real because it is understood and to some extent controlled. Identification and objectivity are delicately balanced com- ponents in the counsellor’s approach.”’

We can see here the pairing of identification and objectivity, similar to what Stewart did later and which he labeled empathy.

In the same paper, Rogers also apparently drew on Taft’s ideas concerning the need to recognize and accept the client’s spontaneous self. “As material is given by the client, it is the therapist’s function to help him recognize and clarify the emotions which he feels.” ”‘

Nor did the term empathy appear in an often-quoted 1946 paper entitled “Signifi- cant Aspects of Client-Centered Therapy.” By this time, however, Rogers referred to “deep understanding’’ as one of the conditions that seemed necessary in therapy. He said the therapist should use procedures and techniques

which convey his deep understanding of the emotionalized attitudes expressed .and his acceptance of them. This understanding is perhaps best conveyed by a sensltlve reflection and clarification of the client’s attitudes. The counselor’s acceptance involves neither approval or disapproval.’16

mit the use of self which the t R era utic relationship implies as we P 1 as his psy-


He then emphasized the need for the therapist to concentrate “upon trying to understand the client us the client seems to himself.” This statement strongly suggests Rogers was utilizing a role-taking view of “deep understanding,” rather than only an emotional identification perspective. This also appears to be the first time he used the phrase “as the client seems to himself.” ’”

By 1951, however, Rogers did refer specifically to empathy. In Client-Centered Therapy he discussed the counselor’s “empathic attitude’* and “empathic understanding,” describing the counselor’s role this way:

. . . it is the counselor’s function to assume, in so far as he 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 is seen by himself, to lay aside all perceptions from the external frame of reference while doin so, and to communicate something of this empathic

In describing this role he carefully differentiated emotional identification from empathic identification. In the latter, “the counselor is perceiving the hates and hopes and fears of the client through immersion in an empathic process, but without himself, as counselor, experiencing those hates and hopes and fears.” lle Here Rogers is stressing the “as i f ’ quality, rather than the emotional reaction or contagion view of empathy. He does not, however, mention Mead or any other role theorist.

The closest we come to an explanation of Rogers’s rationale for this view rests in his discussion of Gestalt principles and their applications by the counselor. He said that it was difficult to perceive the world “through the client’s eyes” but it was “rather closely analogous to some of the Gestalt phenomena.” He added this example:

Just as, by active concentration, one can suddenly see the diagram in the psychology text as representing a descending rather than an ascending stairway or can perceive two faces instead of a candlestick, so by active effort the counselor can put himself into the client’s frame of reference.’lg

This active, deliberate, conscious behavior is certainly different from Lipps’s loss of self in the art object or Freud’s unconscious identification process. It is quite similar to Cot- trell’s role taking and Stewart’s deliberate efforts to know the other. However, Rogers went beyond all of these theorists when he added the communication dimension. For him, empathy was not only seeing the world as the client did but being able to explain this “seeing” back to the client.

In summary, the counseling/psychotherapy empathy roots began with Freud. Rogers’s view of empathy emphasized the role-taking, or “asif,** quality. Freud and Rogers, as well as other writers, relied primarily on their clinical experience for deriving their ideas. Accordingly, Freud’s identification-imitation-empathy conception evolved independently from the views of Lipps, Worringer, Scheler, Stein, Cooley, or McDougall-all contemporaries. Likewise, Rogers’s empathic understanding- communication construct did not benefit from these writers, or even from Mead and Cot- trell.

CONCLUSION By tracing historically the ideas of the early aesthetic, sociological, social-

psychological, developmental, and counseling/psychotherapy writers, we find several related but somewhat different theoretical explanations concerning empathy.

The aesthetic writers, such as Lipps, Lee, and Worringer, indicated that empathy is the way we understand foreign objects. This occurs when we project onto objects our own

understanding to the client. ‘18


thoughts and feelings. However, in order to do this, the individual has to respond to the particular form of the object. They extended these ideas to explaining how we understand other humans. The observer loses himself in the other. In particular, Lipps argued that this loss of self allows the observer to grasp the other’s characteristics, which then in- teract with the observer’s own thoughts and feelings.

The sociological theorists, such as Cooley and Mead, were more interested in the process whereby the child learns to be a member of adult society. Self-centered reactions give way to differentiating the self from others. In order for this process to occur, the child has to be able to take on the role of the other. What Cooley labeled sympathy, Mead referred to as “putting yourself in his place.” In one sense, the child learns to understand what is, originally, outside of her world. This is not too different from what the aesthetic writers said.

With the social-psychological theorists, however, an additional view becomes apparent. Although writers such as Cottrell also saw empathy as role taking, others, such as McDougall and Allport, viewed it as emotional contagion or reaction. An observer is empathic when he or she has a similar thought or emotion to the person observed. Sym- pathy, by contrast, indicates feeling sorry for the other.

With the developmental writings of Piaget, we see a further focus on the role-taking aspects of empathy. Referring to this process as a lack of egocentric thought/feeling, or decentering, Piaget argued that this process is necessary if the child is to move through the normal developmental stages. It is easy to see the similarity between this idea and those of Cooley and Mead.

Several of the counseling/psychotherapy theorists also emphasized the role-taking view of empathy. Rogers said empathic understanding exists when the counselor thinks and feels “as i f ’ he or she were the client. By contrast, Stewart, following Freud’s original ideas, wrote that empathy involves identification and deliberate, positive feelings toward the other. It is not simply taking on the other’s role. Regardless of this difference, Rogers and Stewart indicated that empathy is important to successful counseling/ psychotherapy.

These related but somewhat varying explanations of empathy are clearly connected to the different research methods and empathy measures that have emanated from the social, developmental, and counseling/psychotherapy fields.’*O As I suggested elsewhere,121 because of these differences, however, it is difficult to integrate the findings from these three literatures. Perhaps with this historical discussion available, current specialized researchers will be able to connect their ideas, methods, and findings to more general concepts and thereby be stimulated to plan studies that will tap more of the total psychological empathic experience.

NOTES

I .

2.

3.

Kenneth B. Clark, “Empathy: A Neglected Topic in Psychological Research.” American Psychologist

Gerald A. Gladstein. “Empathy: An Unneglected Topic in Psychological Research.” American

For examples, sce Martin L. Hoffman, “Empathy, Its Development and Prosocial Implications,” in Nebraska Symposium on Motivarion. 1977, ed. H. E. Howe, Jr., and C. B. Keasey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977); Suzanne Smither, “A Reconsideration of the Developmental Study of Empathy,” Human Development 20 (1977): 253-276; Gerald A. Gladstein, “Empathy and Counseling Outcomes: An Em- pirical and Conceptual Review.” Counseling Psychologist 6 (1977): 70-79.

35 (1980): 187-190.

Psychologkt 36 (1981): 224-225.


4. For discussions concerning the difficulty of using traditional scientific methods in studying empathy, see David A. Stewart, Preface to Empathy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956) and Heinz Kohut, The Search /or the Self. Vols. I and I I (New York: International Universities Press, 1978). Examples of studies that use traditional methods are referred to in Justin Aronfreed, “The Socialization of Altruistic and Sympathetic Behavior: Some Theoretical and Experimental Analyses,” in Altruism and Helping Behavior. ed. J. Macaulay and L. Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1970); Ezra Stotland, “Exploratory Investigations of Em- pathy.” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 4, ed. L. Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1969); Martin E. Ford, “The Construct Validity of Egocentrism,” Psychological Bulletin 86 (1979): 1169-1 188; and JoAnn C. Feldstein and Gerald A. Gladstein. “A Comparison of the Construct Validities of Four Measures of Empathy,” Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance 13 (1980): 49-57.

5 . This point is nicely argued by Ernest R. Hilgard. “The Trilogy of Mind: Cognition, Affection, and Conation,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 16 (1980): 114-1 15

6. Ibid., p. 116. 7. For examples, see Gordon W. Allport, Personalify: A Psychological Interpretation (New York: Holt,

1937), p. 530; Jean Piaget, The Moral Development of the Child (New York: Free Press, 1932/1965), p. 386. 8. J p g e n B. Hunsdahl, “Concerning Einfiihlung (Empathy): A Concept Analysis of Its Origin and Early

Development.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 3 (1967): 180-191. 9. W. A. Listowel, A Critical History of Modern Aesthetics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1933).

10. Katherine E. Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, A History of Esthetics (New York: Macmillan. 1939). I I . For examples, see Edwin G. Boring, A History ofExperimenta1 Psychology (New York: Appleton-

12. Gilbert and Kuhn, History, p. 537. 13. Vernon Lee and C. Anstruther-Thompson, Beauty and Uglyness: And Other Studies in Psychological

Aesthetics (New York: John Lane, 1912). p. 17. 14. Melvin M. Rader, A Modern Book of Esthetics: An Anthology (New York: Holt, 1935), p. 287. IS. Hunsdahl. “Concerning Einfiihlung,” p. 181. 16. Gilbert and Kuhn. History, p. 537. 17. Listowel. Critical History. 18. Boring, History, p. 441. 19. Edward B. Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes (New York:

Macmillan, IW), p. 21. 20. Theodor Lipps, Grundlegung der Aesthetek: I (Leipzig: Voss, 1903); Zur Einfuhlung (Leipzig: W.

Englemann. 1913). Chapters 1 and 2 of Zur Einfuhlung were translated by Susan Grossbeck and edited by Gerald A. Gladstein in 1980. 21. Edith Stein, On the Problem o/Empathy, 2nd ed., trans. Waltraut Stein (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

1970). Her original dissertation, upon which this book was based, was published in 1917. 22. Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans.

Michael Bullock (New York: International Universities Press, 1967). The original German version was published in 1908. The first translation appeared in 1953. Max Scheler, The Nature ofSympathy, trans. Peter Heath (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1970). The original German version was published in 1913. The first translation appeared in Great Britain in 1954.

Century, 1929) and Robert L. Katz, Empathy: Its Nature and Uses (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1963).

23. Lee and Anstruther-Thompson, Beauty and Uglyness, p. 41. 24. Ibid., p. 43. 25. Theodor Lipps, “Empathy, Inner Imitation, and Sense-Feelings,” in Rader. Esthetics, pp. 291-304. This

26. Quoted by Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, p. 24. 27. Quoted by Hunsdahl. “Concerning Einfiihlung,” p. 184. 28. Quoted by Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy. p. 6 . 29. Ibid. 30. For example. Hoffman. “Empathy.” p. 187. 31. Rader, Esthetics, pp. 292-293. 32. Stewart, Preface to Empathy; Carl R. Rogers, “The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic

33. Lee and Anstruther-Thompson, Beauty and Uglyness. Pages 156-239 of this book reproduce their

34. Listowel, Critical History, pp. 64-65. 35. Lee and Anstruther-Thompson, Beauty and Uglyness, p. 354.

paper was published in German in 1903; English translation by Rader and Max Schertel.

Personality Change,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 21 (1957): 95-103.

original paper published in 1897 in Contemporary Review.


36. Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy. p. 4. 37. See, for example, Michael Chandler, "Social Cognition: A Selective Review of Current Research," in

Knowledge and Development: Advances in Research and Theory, Vol. 1 . ed. W. F. Overton and J . M. Gallagher (New York: Plenum, 1977). 38. Scheler, Sympathy, p. 18. 39. Stein, Problem of Empathy, p. I I . 40. Stotland. "Exploratory Investigations"; Hoffman, "Empathy." 41. Lauren G. Wispe, "Sympathy and Empathy," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol.

I S . ed. D. L. Sills (New York: Macmillan. 1968). 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

2. Charles H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902), p.

Ibid., pp. 102-103. Ibid., p. 103. Charles H. Cooley, Social Theory and Social Research (New York: Henry Holt, 1930), pp. 293-294. Cooley, Human Nature, p. 136. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), p. xiii. Ibid.. p. 299. Ibid.. p. 366. Ibid. Aronfreed, "Socialization of Behavior." Leonard S. Cottrell, "The Analysis of Situational Fields in Social Psychology," American Sociological

Review 7 (1942): 374. 53. Ibid.. p. 381. 54. Wilhelm Wundt, Ethics: An Investigation of the Laws of the Moral Life. Vol. I (New York: Macmillan,

1897), pp. 242-243. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

William McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology (Boston: Luce. 1908), p. 92. Ibid.. p. 94. Ibid.. p. 95. Ibid., p, 168. Ibid., p. 173 Scheler, Sympathy. p. 14. Floyd H. Allport, Social Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924). p. 239. Lee and Anstruther-Thompson, Beauty and Uglyness, pp. 64-65. See, for example, Aronfreed, "Socialization of Behavior," pp. 113-1 16. Fritz Heider, The Psychology of Inrerpersonal Relations (New York: Wiley, 1958). p. 279. Ibid.. p. 280.

. . . For the empathy label, for example, see David Aderman and Leonard Berkowitz. "Observational Set, Empathy, and Helping," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 14 (1970): 141-148; for the sympathy label, for example, see Edna I. Rawlings, "Reactive Guilt and Anticipatory Guilt in Altruistic Behavior," in Macaulay and Berkowitz, Altruism and Helping. 67. Leonard S. Cottrell and Esther Dymond, "The Empathic Process." Psychiatry I2 (1949): 355-359. See.

for example, Robert Kurtz and Donald Grummon, "DitTerent Approaches to the Measurement of Therapist Empathy and Their Relationship to Therapy Outcomes," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 39

Bibb Latank and John Darley, "Bystander Intervention in Emergencies," in Macaulay and Berkowitz, Altruism and Helping.

For a recent discussion emphasizing this view of empathy, see J. Philippe Rushton, Altruism. Socializa- lion. and Society (Englewood Cliffs. N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1980).

Jean Piaget, The Child's Conception of the World(Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1975), pp. 127-128. The first English edition was published in 1929.

Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child (New York: Free Press, 1965). pp. 386-395. The original English translation appeared in 1932.

James M. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Study in Social Psychology (New York: Macmillan, 1897), pp. 7-8.

Piaget, Moral Judgment, pp. 391-395.

(1972): 106-1 15. 68.

69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

58 GERALD A. GLADSTElN

74. 75. Ibid., p. 224. 76. 77. Ibid. 78.

Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 221.

Piaget, Moral Judgment, p. 398.

For example, Neal Burns and Lorna Cavey, “Age Differences in Empathic Ability among Children,” Canadian Journal of Psychology 1 I (1958): 227-230; Melvin H. Feffer and Vivian Gourevitch, “Cognitive Aspects of Role-Taking in Children,” Journal of Personality 28 (1960): 383-396.

Jean Piaget. Judgment and Reasoning in the Child (Paterson, N.J.: Littlefield. Adams, 1959), p. 216. This book was first published in English in 1928.

79.

80. Hoffman, “Empathy.” 81. Schcler, Sympathy, p. 23. 82. Arnold Buchheimer, “The Development of Ideas about Empathy,” Journal of Counseling Psychology

83. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (London: International Psycho-Analytic Press, 1922). This book was published first in German in 1921; Carl R. Rogers, “The Processes of Therapy,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 4 (1940): 161-164.

Sigmund Freud, “Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psycho-Analysis,” in Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers, Vol. 2, ed. Ernest Jones (New York: Basic Books, 1959). pp. 360-361. This paper appeared first in German in 1913.

10 (1963): 61-70.

84.

85. 86. Ibid., p. 64. 87. Ibid., p. 65. 88. Ibid. 89. Scheler, Sympathy. p. 18. 90. 91. Ibid., p. 70. 92.

Freud, Group Psychology, p. 60.

Freud, Group Psychology, p. 66.

Harry S . Sullivan, Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry (Washington, D.C.: White Foundation, 1947); Theodor Reik, Listening with the Third Ear (New York: Grove Press, 1948); Stewart, Preface to Empathy; Kohut, Search for Sey . 93. Sullivan, Modern Psychiatry, p. 9. 94. Ibid., p. 41. 95. Ibid., pp. 375-376. 96. Rcik. Listening, pp. 233-234. 97. Ibid., p. 116. 98. Ibid.. p. 112. 99. Stewart, Preface to Empathy, p. 12.

100. Ibid., p. 100. 101. Ibid., p. I l l . 102. Katz. Empathy. 103. Kohut, Search for Selj 104. Ibid., p. 700. 105. originally published in German in 1929. The first English edition came out in 1936. 106. Ibid., p. 4. 107. Jessie Taft, The Dynamics of Therapy in a Controlled Relationship (New York: Macmillan, 1933). p. 6. 108. Ibid., p. 19. 109. Carl R. Rogers, Counseling and Psychotherapy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942), pp. 27-28; Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961). p. 10. 110. Rogers, Counseling, p. 28. I I I . 112. Ibid., p. 161. 113. Ibid., p. 162. 114. Ibid. I 1 5. 416.

Otto Rank, Will Therapy and Truth and Reality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950). This book was

Carl R. Rogers, “The Process of Therapy,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 4 (1940): 162.

Carl R. Rogers, “Significant Aspects of Client-Centered Therapy,” American Psychologist 1 (1946):


116. Ibid.. p. 420. 117. Carl R. Rogers, Clienr-Centered Therapy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951). p. 29. 118. Ibid. 119. Ibid., p. 32. 120. These difi‘erent research methods and empathy measures have been discussed in detail in my book in progress, Emparhy and Helping. Briefly, the social, developmental, and counseling/psychotherapy fields have produced somewhat different ideal research designs and measures. For example, the developmental literature has been very influenced by Piaget’s clinical interview methodology while many social psychology studies have used laboratory, experimental methods for measuring empathy. The counseling/psychotherapy field has frequently used audiotaped interviews and had independent judges rate the amount of empathy present. This latter approach emanated from Rogers’s theory. 121. Gerald A. Gladstein, “Understanding Empathy: Integrating Counseling, Developmental, and Social Psychology Perspecti.ves,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 30 (1983): 467-482.

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