What a corker of a term \u2013 and a concept. Coined by someone with a corker of a name: Jerold Bozarth, a big fish in the person-centred therapy world. I’m grateful to Bozarth, who posited that an empathic response could take a plethora of forms. He discerned exactly how empathy could be different from simply reflecting back an understanding of someone else\u2019s shoes (metaphorical footwear, if you will).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specifically, Bozarth (1984) said that a response was also empathic if it:
a. Comes authentically from me as an individual
b. Is in response to another as an individual
c. Arises from the here-and-now context<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me give an example. Easy-to-identify empathy may sound something like, \u2018you\u2019re ambivalent\u2019. An idiosyncratic empathic response may be something like, \u2018I could tell you what I know about x and y\u00a0<\/em>if you would like that\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first part of the sentence (in italics) comes authentically from me as an individual. The rest of the sentence (\u2018if you would like that\u2019) is in response to another as an individual. Regarding the ‘arising from the \u2018here-and-now context\u2019’ part, we are talking about overall meaning and possibly content. In other words, the \u2018x and y\u2019 that I\u2019m offering to say more about is somehow consistent with the original comment(s) made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Idiosyncratic empathy therefore precludes anything general, for example stock responses made to various clients. These would not be responses from an individual, to an individual, in a specific context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For someone like me who\u2019s pretty disciplined about what comes out of my mouth in the old 50 minutes, buying into this is a revelation. By \u2018buying into\u2019, I mean I agree heartily with making room for personal, unscripted responses in the counselling room. However, I feel strongly that idiosyncratic empathy has to be married with discipline; it\u2019s not a green light for anything goes. And similarly on the other side, that there is no place for bland, vanilla responses in person-centred therapy (\u2018idiotic empathy\u2026\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n References<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bozarth, J. D., (1984) Beyond reflection: Emergent modes of empathy, in R. Levant & J. Shlein (Eds). In Client-centered Therapy and the Person-centered approach. New York, Praeger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a corker of a term \u2013 and a concept. Coined by someone with a corker of a name: Jerold Bozarth, a big fish in the person-centred therapy world. I’m grateful to Bozarth, who posited that an empathic response could take a plethora of forms. He discerned exactly how<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":596,"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chandcounselling.co.uk\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}