Nowadays, with the extent of the complexity of everyday life amongst society, there is an increasing number of people that resort to the help of psychologists in order to cope with personal troubles or the effects of societal issues (Mills, 2000). It evidently follows that psychologists are under great pressure to resolve theses troubles as they otherwise may lead rapid depreciation of the patient’s quality of life. It is often the case that the problems that they struggle with are strongly linked to the society in which they live which leads the psychologists to be advantaged by the possession of sociological imagination (Mills, 2000). This quality of mind enables them to understand the extent of that link and to sometimes utilize their social
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Psychologists must therefore express empathy in order to have an effective therapy outcome. Empathy is the “process of understanding a person’s subjective experience by vicariously sharing that experience while maintaining an observant stance” (Hardee, 2009). This process of “practical empathic communication” (Hardee, 2009) is beneficial in increasing effectiveness of the therapy and is the “central ingredient in the relationship between the therapist and client” (Carlozzi et al, 2002). It is composed of several steps which starts with the recognition of presence of strong feelings in the client, followed by a brief pause to imagine how the patient might be feeling and a statement of the perception of said feeling and ending with legitimizing of the feelings and the offer of support and partnership (Hardee, 2009). Society expects professional helpers to express empathy towards people in need of help, however, professional socialization teaches psychologist students, just like medical practitioner students, that there is no time for empathy and that they should focus on obtaining useful factual information rather than on being empathic and truly caring towards the patients (Beagan, 2001). This results in low levels of empathy in high status helping professionals (Hardee, 2009). However, empathy is an internal condition and is not necessarily linked to communication skills but rather to “qualities intrinsic to one’s personality” (Carlozzi et al, 2002), which may make for some helping professionals who do display signs of empathy towards the
Psychologists must therefore express empathy in order to have an effective therapy outcome. Empathy is the “process of understanding a person’s subjective experience by vicariously sharing that experience while maintaining an observant stance” (Hardee, 2009). This process of “practical empathic communication” (Hardee, 2009) is beneficial in increasing effectiveness of the therapy and is the “central ingredient in the relationship between the therapist and client” (Carlozzi et al, 2002). It is composed of several steps which starts with the recognition of presence of strong feelings in the client, followed by a brief pause to imagine how the patient might be feeling and a statement of the perception of said feeling and ending with legitimizing of the feelings and the offer of support and partnership (Hardee, 2009). Society expects professional helpers to express empathy towards people in need of help, however, professional socialization teaches psychologist students, just like medical practitioner students, that there is no time for empathy and that they should focus on obtaining useful factual information rather than on being empathic and truly caring towards the patients (Beagan, 2001). This results in low levels of empathy in high status helping professionals (Hardee, 2009). However, empathy is an internal condition and is not necessarily linked to communication skills but rather to “qualities intrinsic to one’s personality” (Carlozzi et al, 2002), which may make for some helping professionals who do display signs of empathy towards the