ABSTRACT
Among the terms Kohut introduced into psychoanalytic discourse, empathy has been the most fiercely debated. Kohut (1959) proposed that empathy, in tandem with introspection, is the means of data gathering unique to psychoanalysis and thereby defines its subject matter. He never wavered in his definition of empathy as an observational tool. By contrast, he was initially ambivalent with regard to the function of empathy in facilitating the therapeutic process, and he found himself returning to the topic again and again, the last time in his valedictory address to the Self Psychology Conference in 1981.
