IPSS Short Seminar: Expanding our Conceptions of Empathy – Peter Kaufmann, Ph.D.

Kohut made empathy a centerpiece to his approach to understanding and treating patients.  More recently, several influential writers have provided alternatives to Kohut’s ideas, attempting to form bridges between self psychology an other relational perspectives. In this minicourse we will first review Kohut’s seminal contributions about empathy. After this we will consider how recent theorists such as Malcolm Slavin, Hazel Ipp, and Steven Stern have offered other conceptualizations that can expand our understanding of empathy.  The course will conclude with a case presentation by the instructor that represents an integration of these viewpoints.