This article considers different understandings of empathy in Psychotherapy and transactional analysis, including Carl Rogers's contribution to the development and understanding of empathy. A review of his necessary and sufficient conditions for therapeutic change clarifies the bilateral and intersubjective nature of empathic understanding, empathy, and empathic transactions. Various aspects of empathy are elaborated in terms of Stark's (1999) taxonomy of psychologies, and a fourth, two-person-plus psychology, is proposed to reflect an empathy that is sociocentric rather than egocentric.
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