Establishing the Therapeutic Impact of Empathy Through “Affect Sharing”

Bruce Herzog
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引用次数: 7

Abstract

What if the enduring desire of the psychoanalytic discipline to be seen as scientific provoked the suppression of certain therapeutic practices? It would explain why Kohut defined empathy only as a mode of clinical observation when he began discussing it, because even that proposal risked being seen as unscientific and controversial. Today, there exists a more favorable professional atmosphere, which should allow for empathic phenomena to now be included in a theory of cure. Clinical examples in this article demonstrate how “affect sharing” can be used in this way. Affect sharing occurs when the therapist believes he or she is reverberating with the affect the patient feels, resulting from a “sharing” selfobject transference, the aim of which is to elicit a shared emotional state with the therapist. In “descriptive affect sharing,” therapists are encouraged to feel what their patients are feeling when listening to their patients’ evocative descriptions. In “active affect sharing,” an activity introduced by the patient can lead to a shared emotional experience within the analytic dyad. These patient-initiated empathic events are experienced as having been shared when the therapist communicates—verbally or non-verbally, directly or indirectly—that affect sharing has occurred. Incrementally escalating affective communications are defined as “reciprocal intensifications” of affect sharing, where both patient and therapist use emotional phraseology and tone to intensify and solidify the shared empathic connection. Affect sharing is a form of empathy that constitutes its own selfobject experience, with mutative properties that firmly establish empathy as an integral component of therapeutic change.
通过“情感分享”建立共情的治疗效果
如果精神分析学科被视为科学的持久愿望激起了对某些治疗实践的抑制,那该怎么办?这可以解释为什么科胡特在开始讨论共情时,只把它定义为一种临床观察模式,因为即使这个提议也有被视为不科学和有争议的风险。今天,有一个更有利的专业氛围,这应该允许移情现象现在包括在治疗理论。本文中的临床示例演示了如何以这种方式使用“影响共享”。情感分享发生在治疗师相信他或她正在与患者感受到的情感产生共鸣时,这是“分享”自我客体转移的结果,其目的是引发与治疗师共享的情感状态。在“描述性情感分享”中,治疗师被鼓励去感受他们的病人在听他们的病人的唤起性描述时的感受。在“积极的情感分享”中,患者引入的一项活动可以在分析二分体中导致共享的情感体验。当治疗师口头或非口头、直接或间接地沟通时,这些由患者发起的共情事件被体验为已经被分享了,影响分享已经发生了。逐步升级的情感交流被定义为情感分享的“互惠强化”,患者和治疗师都使用情感措辞和语气来加强和巩固共享的共情联系。情感分享是共情的一种形式,它构成了自身的自我客体体验,具有突变特性,使共情成为治疗变化的一个组成部分。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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