Empathy: A HistoryA surprising, sweeping, and deeply researched history of empathy—from late-nineteenth-century German aesthetics to mirror neurons†‹ Empathy: A History tells the fascinating and largely unknown story of the first appearance of “empathy” in 1908 and tracks its shifting meanings over the following century. Despite empathy’s ubiquity today, few realize that it began as a translation of Einfühlung or “in-feeling” in German psychological aesthetics that described how spectators projected their own feelings and movements into objects of art and nature. Remarkably, this early conception of empathy transformed into its opposite over the ensuing decades. Social scientists and clinical psychologists refashioned empathy to require the deliberate putting aside of one’s feelings to more accurately understand another’s. By the end of World War II, interpersonal empathy entered the mainstream, appearing in advice columns, popular radio and TV, and later in public forums on civil rights. Even as neuroscientists continue to map the brain correlates of empathy, its many dimensions still elude strict scientific description. This meticulously researched book uncovers empathy’s historical layers, offering a rich portrait of the tension between the reach of one’s own imagination and the realities of others’ experiences. |
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ability aesthetic American Journal another's Anstruther-Thomson audience Baldwin behavior bodily brain Burgess called Cambridge Carl Rogers child Clark client Client-Centered Therapy clinical cognitive concept Cottrell dance Decety described developed Dymond Education Einfühlung emotional empa empathic index empathy Empathy Gap empathy’s Ernest Burgess experience Experimental explained feeling folder Freud Gallese Gordon Allport GWA Papers Harvard History Hoskins human Ibid identified imagine James James Mark Baldwin Jessie Taft Journal of Psychology Kenneth kinesthetic kinesthetic images laboratory Langfeld Lipps Lipps's mental method Mind mirror neurons Modern motor movement neural Neuroscience neuroscientists object one's Otto Rank pathy patients perception personality philosopher physiological popular prejudice projection psychiatrist Psycho Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy racial response Review Rizzolatti Rogers's schizophrenia scientific Social Neuroscience Social Psychology social workers Sociology Southard subjects sympathy Theodor Lipps theory therapist tion understanding University of Chicago University Press Vernon Lee Ward York