With the aid of the most recent neuroscientific and psychological investigations, the author proposes an integrative approach of empathy, using this to explore the characteristic way that, in group analysis, empathy is an investigative agent, and, as such, opens a very special pathway to the analysands' intra-psychic lives. It is also proposed that this instrument of investigation is amplified in the group-analytic and psychotherapeutic group contexts. The author subsequently reflects on the manner in which, in group analysis, empathy is also integrated in the therapeutic process itself and the factors that have an effect on the analyst's empathic abilities: familiarity, similarity, learning and past experience.
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