ABSTRACT
T He Student Of Literature and the student of clinical encounters have empathic tasks that are similar. Both wish to immerse themselves over a period of time sufficient to merge with the inner mental life of the subject under scrutiny. Further, both tend to apprise the other's situation through capturing a memory of their own, similar experiences. In this essay, I am advancing the argument that understanding in literature can only be accomplished through the application of correct empathy. Conversely, misunderstandings or incomplete understandings will occur if the reader experiences a resistance to empathy or his (or her) introspections are not genuinely vicarious—the phenomenon of empathic failure.
