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Published on: January 10, 2014
Empathy: from mind reading to the reading of a distant text
1Office for Interdisciplinary Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, PO Box 653 84105, Beer-Sheva, Israel. yneuman@bgu.ac.il
Abstract:
In the psychoanalytic literature empathy is commonly discussed as a form of "mind reading", which is deeply associated with the capacity to mirror the other's mental state. In this paper, I propose an alternative perspective on empathy as the process of reading a distant text. This perspective is illustrated through a Talmudic story and by weaving a thread between Bakhtin, Bion and Lacan. The paper concludes by pointing to the danger of empathy as a hidden form of projective identification that provides the reader with a false sense of control rather than with negative capability for otherness.
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