The American Journal of Psychoanalysis

, Volume 68, Issue 3, pp 257–275 | Cite as

Concern and Empathy: Two Concepts or One?

Article
First Online:

Abstract

For years, concern was treated as a marginal concept in psychoanalytic thought. Awareness of its importance increased due to the rise of object-relations theories: Suttie's description of the inborn impulse to give, attachment theory and the behavioral system of caregiving, and of course the emphasis on concern in the theoretical thinking of Winnicott, who even wanted to change the Kleinian term depressive position to stage of concern. However, the centrality that empathy took on with the appearance of self psychology made it seem unnecessary to pay separate attention to concern. The relational approach sheds new light on the concept of concern. This paper proposes distinguishing between empathy and concern as two different mental functions that affect each other. Under normal conditions they are intertwined and produce the unique way in which the individual relates to others.

Keywords

concern empathy object-relations intersubjectivity 
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Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of PsychologyBar-Ilan UniversityRamat GanIsrael

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