Unbearable Emotion

Sympathy usually means entering into and sharing feelings that another person has verbally and intentionally expressed; empathy involves intuiting something unspoken, of which the other person may sometimes be entirely unaware. A psychotherapist’s ability to empathize with and understand unconscious parts of a client’s communication depends in large part upon feeling comfortable with those parts within him- or herself. Personal psychotherapy must therefore play a central part in training.