ABSTRACT
O Ne Cannot Truly Escape one's times: our efforts to define and master the concept of empathy take place in a context of historical inevitability. The broad theme of reconciling individual identities and needs with group pressures and demands is in the air for all aspects of Western civilization. As if in an unconscious historical unfolding beyond any conscious-theoretical awareness, psychoanalysis has come to express its own manifestation of these historical forces.
