Re-Examining Empathy: A Relational-Feminist Point of View‪.‬

For thousands of years people have been aware of the concept of empathy. In ancient Greece, philosophers expressed their understanding of "empathy" by the word empatheria, which implies an active appreciation of another person's feeling experience (Astin, 1967). In 1910, British psychologist Edward Titchener translated the German word "Einfuhlung" into empathy, literally meaning "to feel oneself into" (Bohart & Greenberg, 1997). In the 1950s, American psychologist Carl Rogers highlighted the importance of empathy in his client-centered approach to working with people. His description of empathy was widely adopted by social workers, giving common voice to its meaning in professional literature. According to Rogers (1951), Although empathy may be used differently in different models of practice and in different practice settings, current social work scholars consistently identify the concept of empathy as one of the critical ingredients in constructing a helping relationship in which the client feels understood and sustained by the worker (Hepworth, Rooney, Rooney, Strom-Gottfried, & Larsen, 2006; Shulman, 2006). Furthermore, empirical studies have demonstrated that empathy has been closely correlated with effective outcomes in social work practice. For example, Truax and Mitchell (1971) have shown that the failure to empathize with clients is a key error that leads ultimately to the client's premature withdrawal from the helping process.