ABSTRACT
Empathically improvising different modes of organizing experience always makes for some identity diffusion. This chapter attempts to develop the psychology of the analyst’s empathie activity, from on to be designated empathizing. Although empathizing will remain the focus throughout, the following discussion should, owing to its wide range, also develop further the idea of the analytic attitude. Looking at attacks on empathizing from another angle, one sees that analysands often are unprepared to empathize with themselves. In many respects, literary critics are far ahead of psychoanalysts in their examination of the principles and problems of analyzing discourse and dialogue in terms of their transformational aspects. As a rule, psychoanalysts have been more concerned with the content of psychoanalytic dialogue and the long-range personal changes effected by this dialogue than they have been with the personal changes that mediate or enable effective discourse and dialogue of one kind or another.
