Explorations in the uses of language in psychotherapy: complex empathic statements

I have suggested (1978) that the language occurring to us in personal and psychotherapeutic speech reflects our distance from one another, and that the empathic position in particular evokes emotional reverberations and spontaneous verbal accompaniments which serve to identify that position. I have also suggested some prototypic forms of this spontaneous empathic speech. A clinical anecdote and two observations will illustrate these points and prepare for the discussion of more complex empathic forms.