Lou Agosta

eBook, ePUB

A Rumor of Empathy (eBook, ePUB)

Resistance, narrative and recovery in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

Beschreibung

Empathy is an essential component of the psychoanalyst's ability to listen and treat their patients. It is key to the achievement of therapeutic understanding and change. A Rumor of Empathy explores the psychodynamic resistances to empathy, from the analyst themselves, the patient, from wider culture, and seeks to explore those factors which represent resistance to empathic engagement, and to show how these can be overcome in the psychoanalytic context. Lou Agosta shows that classic interventions can themselves represent resistances to empathy, such as the unexamined life; over-medication, and the application of devaluing diagnostic labels to expressions of suffering. Drawing on Freud, Kohut, Spence, and other major thinkers, Agosta explores how empathy is distinguished as a unified multidimensional clinical engagement, encompassing receptivity, understanding, interpretation and narrative. In this way, he sets out a new way of understanding and using empathy in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. When all the resistances have been engaged, defences analyzed, diagnostic categories applied, prescriptions written, and interpretive circles spun out, in empathy one is quite simply in the presence of another human being.

Agosta depicts the unconscious forms of resistance and raises our understanding of the fears of merger that lead a therapist to take a step back from the experience of their patients, using ideas such as "alturistic surrender" and "compassion fatigue" which are highlighted in a number of clinical vignettes. Empathy itself is not self-contained. It is embedded in social and cultural values, and Agosta highlights the mental health culture and its expectations of professional organizations. This outstanding text will be relevant to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists who wish to make a contribution to reducing the suffering and emotional distress of their clients, and also to trainees who are more vulnerable to the professional demands on their capacity for empathic listening.

Lou Agosta, Ph.D. teaches empathy in systems and the history of psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University. He is the author of numerous articles on empathy in human relations, aesthetics, altruism, and film. He is a psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago, USA. See www.aRumorOfEmpathy.com

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Autor

Lou Agosta, Ph.D. teaches empathy in systems and the history of psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University. He is the author of numerous articles on empathy in human relations, aesthetics, altruism, and film. He is a psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago, IL, USA. See www.aRumorOfEmpathy.com

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 243
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Juni 2015
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781317575320
• Artikelnr.: 43075642

Rezensionen

"Lou Agosta has written a delightful and much needed book on the evolution and genesis of the idea of empathy. His deep appreciation and understanding of the writings of Hume, Kant, Lipps, Freud, Scheler and Husserl allows him to recognize, explore and ultimately fashion a wonderfully clear and practical notion of empathy, one in which we not only come to know the other as we listen with care, understand with insight, and interpret with feeling, but also one in which we learn to communicate openly and respond with humanity. In bringing together the skills of the philosopher and the experience of the psychotherapist, Lou Agosta helps us to understand the steady rise of empathy and why it informs and inspires so many modern-day disciplines

and professional practices. For all those wishing to revel in empathy's rich provenance, this is the book for you." - David Howe, Emeritus Professor, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK and author of Empathy: What It Is and Why It Matters

"A Rumor of Empathy is a masterpiece of philosophical-historical scholarship, presenting a rich and comprehensive account of the explicit and implicit conceptions of empathy that have appeared in the course of Western thinking from Hume through Kant, Lipps, Freud, and contemporary phenomenologists, both philosophical and psychoanalytic. Husserl's rewriting of his own publishing position as empathy shifts to the foundation of intersubjectivity is particularly eye opening. This book will be a valuable resource not only for scholars in philosophy, psychology and the human sciences, but for practitioners of psychoanalytic and humanistic psychotherapy as well." Robert D. Stolorow, author of World, Affectivity, Trauma: Post-Cartesian Philosophy

"An insightful and provocative exploration of a topic that has only begun to receive the attention it deserves and the conceptual clarity needed for proper understanding. Agosta's study of empathy is rich in historical context and thorough in covering the intersections of philosophy and psychology on the question of empathy. The deep history of a rumor of empathy in Hume, Kant, Lipps, Scheler, Stein, and Husserl is innovative and disruptive, the latter in a positive sense. Agosta rightly, in my view, finds in Husserl a primary vehicle for advancing the discussion, yet he has his own voice and sense of how to think it through. An impressive achievement." - Lawrence J. Hatab, Louis I. Jaffe Professor of Philosophy, Old Dominion University, USA