61st Annual Conference

Session 314
The  Many Voices of Empathy: A Peer Supervision Group

Chair:         

Fern Cramer Azima, Ph.D., FAGPA, Associate Professor & Adjunct Professor, Psychiatry & Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada      

Panelists:    

Frances Bonds-White, Ed.D., CGP, DFAGPA, Clinical Assistant Professor

of Psychology in Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Leonard Horwitz, Ph.D., CGP, DFAGPA, Training Analyst, Greater Kansas

City Psychoanalytic Institute, Kansas City, Kansas           

Walter Stone, M.D., CGP, DFAGPA, Professor Emeritus, University of

Cincinnati College of Medicine, Mill Valley, California

This open session will review the concept of empathy for its therapeutic and anti-therapeutic dimensions in the practice of group psychotherapy.  Panelists will address and define the concept from their specific framework  (psychodynamic/interactional, psychoanalytic, self psychology and transactional analysis) and present a case vignette of an empathic impasse from the therapist's or supervisor's point of view to the other panelists, who will engage as a Peer Supervisory Group. The audience will be asked to elaborate the concept of empathy and to offer questions and suggestions to the panel.

Course References:

1. Azima Cramer, F.  (1989). Confrontation, empathy and interpretation. In Adolescent Group

    Psychotherapy,eds. Cramer Azima, F.  & Richmond, L. 3-19. Meriden, CT:  International

    Universities Press.

2. Hargaden, H. & Sills, C. (2002). Transactional Analysis: A Relational Perspective.  Brunner-

    Routledge Press, East Susses, England.

3. Stone, W. (2001). The role of the therapist's affect in the detection of empathic failures,

    misunderstandings and injury. Group, 25, 3-14.