On the Responsive Nature of Empathy

In the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the traditional understanding of the phenomenon of empathy was based on presumptions of implicit characteristics of human personal identity. Empathy was interpreted as the ability of people to be aware, through their own senses, of the condition of other people and things. We suggest to interpret empathy as a form of psychological activity of a human, that is to say a form of expressing responsivity that is implicitly inherent to human existence - an ability to change while responding. The hypothesis of the responsive nature of empathic activity allows us to overcome the question of empathy being a human way to learn and interact. We propose to eliminate this question by making the subject matter more precise. It is probably not possible to find a final answer to the question of empathy. However, we can surely consider empathy both a way of learning and a way of interaction. This is not about two different aspects or components, but about cohesiveness. Responsive interpretation of empathy allows us to discover the basis of such types of psychological activity as establishing appropriate distance and institutionalization of the Other, taking into consideration that these are inevitably connected to transfer, subjectivity of reception, and identification. Examining the psychotechnical and differential aspects of empathic activity which are expressed in the modern concepts of positive psychotherapy and emotional intelligence, we suggest a more systematic view. Empathic activity appears in the coordination of the three psychological activity modes: initiative, sensibility, and reflexivity. Under the optimum circumstances, these modes are complementary to each other and the situation. However, in real situations there might be stages of this process that are characterized by deficit and imbalance of these modes. In this regard, it makes sense to point out one more aspect of empathic activity - empathic deficit.

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