ABSTRACT
Many people think of empathy as something to do with some sort of cosy ideal of mothering, and perfect attunement, and being nice. Some people have argued that therapy based on empathy is a kind of "safe analysis" where there are no ethical dilemmas, no sexuality, no challenges. This chapter discusses some clinical examples to show the relevance of empathy in the developmental process. It describes a fragment of Malcolm's psychotherapy, taken from the beginning of a long and eventually fruitful therapeutic relationship. Malcolm had a variety of defences—ranging from emotional avoidance and withdrawal to hyper-sensitivity, blaming and rejecting—which not only didn't invite attunement or empathy, but often seemed designed to repel it. An empathic narrative recognises that it is not the client who is negative, but the relationships that the client has experienced in the past, and the relational patterns that he or she has internalised.
