ABSTRACT
Harry was suffocating in an intellectual and emotional dependency on their equally famous and iconic lives, both of which were marked by a stunning and destructive narcissism, which left Harry living only in their shadows. Empathy, frequently conflated with sympathy or compassion, signifies a process of emotional and psychological projection. Although thorns have been shed along the way, nothing emotionally stable has yet taken root. The regressive nature of illness in particular can provoke more decaying thorns. Failures in infant attachment, with an accompanying likelihood of the individual's failure to develop efficient processes, or sometimes any process, of self soothing are often concealed behind states of hypochondriasis, for which this chapter suggests the challenging discipline of meditation running alongside of psychotherapy. One of the most problematic aspects of any psychotherapy is the danger of therapists overestimating their powers of empathy when, in reality they are speaking at some unconscious or even conscious level, of themselves.
