ABSTRACT
In proposing a psychoanalytic approach to a level “beyond semiosis,” the chapter focuses on three familiar but ambiguous terms: empathy, recognition, and responsiveness, dimensions that address the embodied dynamic subject in flux. To begin, the word “empathy” includes several common connotations. By its etymology, empathy conveys a stance of feeling with the other, either sharing the other’s actual affective state or feeling together with the other in some significant emotional context. The South African trauma scholar Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela uses psychoanalytic concepts of intersubjectivity in her discussion of witnessing from an empathic position. Within the basic frame of psychotherapy, oriented toward an intersubjective engagement with the other, clinicians employ different preferred theories to gain understanding and insight into the treatment process. The application of intersubjectivity to psychoanalytic theory and practice has brought about a paradigm shift calling for changes in analysts training methods and clinical theory. The chapter also presents some of the key concepts discussed in this book.
