On Empathy 论共情[1]
Kohut(1981) [2]
This article, a reprint of the transcript of Heinz Kohut’s last public address, is Kohut’s final attempt to clarify the role of empathy in psychoanalysis. Kohut defines empathy as a method of psychoanalytic investigation, and then explores the ways in which empathy itself can be a therapeutic response. He describes how empathy’s role has been misinterpreted and misunderstood, and he describes the various forms in which empathic understanding may be communicated to the patient.
这篇文章重印自海因茨·科胡特最后一次公开演讲的打印本，是科胡特最后一次尝试阐述共情在精神分析中的作用。科胡特将共情定义为精神分析研究的一种方法，随后探索了在治疗中的共情本身可以是一种疗愈性回应的方式。他描述了共情的角色是如何被曲解和误解的，他还描述了共情性理解可以传达给患者的各种形式。
Keywords: Kohut; empathy; vicarious introspection; method of investigation; psychoanalysis; self psychology
关键词：科胡特；共情；替代性内省；调查方法；精神分析；自体心理学
Kohut, H. . (2010). On empathy.International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 5(2), 122-131. DOI: 10.1080/15551021003610026
I will summarize in my own way. I would think that many of those who spoke during these meetings, belonging to the intimate circle of my friends and collaborators, have already begun to digest some of my work during the last year or two that is still far from publication, and is not——I'm very persnickety about such things——in that final form that I try to insist on. But I do believe that among the things that I have been writing about, in a book called How Does Analysis Cure? a 150-page essay on the concept of defenses and resistances seen in the light of self psychology, and a broad statement on issues of empathy on various levels of meaning of this term, are the most important ones. And I will address myself to the issue of empathy despite the fact that some couple of years ago I kept saying I'm sick of that topic. It seems to be nonproductive. I hear over and over again the same arguments, and they are so far off my meaning that I had the impression that I was wasting my time, my emotions, my energy that I could use on new ideas and new work. But idiot that I am, I still don't know, despite a fairly long life, and hopefully some attainment of wisdom, that when people keep asking you the same damn question, something must be wrong!
我将用自己的方式进行总结。我想，在这次会议上发言的许多人，一直都是我的亲密的朋友和同仁，在最近一两年中，早已开始消化我的一些的著作，它们离出版还很远，并且不是——我对这种事情很挑剔——我最终要试图坚持的样式。但是，我的确已经开始在写一本名为《精神分析治愈之道》的书，一本150页的论文，在自体心理学的光影中谈论防御和阻抗，并且对共情这一术语各个层面的含义进行了广泛的论述，这些都是最重要的。接下来，我将会讲到共情，这个重要的问题，虽然几年前我一直说我已经厌倦了这个话题。这似乎没有什么成效。这样的争辩我听了一遍又一遍，而且他们（的观点）离我想要表达的意思相去甚远，让我觉得自己在浪费我的时间、情绪和能量，我本可以将这些浪费的时间、情绪和能量用在新想法和新著作中。但我很笨，有些问题我还是不太清楚，尽管命还算长，并且指望获得一些智慧，当人们不停地问你这个该死的问题的时候，那么，一定有什么地方出了问题！
Something is wrong. What is wrong is not what I said in 1959, in this pivotal paper of mine on "Introspection and Empathy," an investigation or an examination of the relationship between mode of observation and theory. This [as the subtitle clearly indicates] was the paper; [it was] not on empathy, on being empathic as an act; [but] only on empathy as a definer of a field, [which is] therefore a field of pure psychology, a field that relates to the inner life of man, the complex mental states—a definition of psychoanalysis that I have proposed many, many years ago already. I think even in one of my presidential addresses, when I was still Mr. Psychoanalysis and in the center of the psychoanalytic movement, even then I said that [psychoanalysis was] the science of complex mental states, [a definition] which bypassed this specific theory, or that specific theory, however important theories may be. It is just as important to realize [the necessity of omitting specific theories from defining our own field of] investigations, as it would be in [connection with defining], let us say, the physical sciences as the sciences that work with the theories of causality, time, and space. By no means is that [explicit inclusion of specific theories in the definition] necessary. There are physical sciences that do not work with the theories of causality, time and space, and yet they are physical sciences. So the same is true for psychoanalysis.
有些观点确实错了。错误的，我不是我在1959年说的，在我那篇关键性的论文《内省与共情：观察模式和理论之间关系的一种调查或检验》中。[正如在副标题中清晰表明的]就是这篇文章；[并不是]将共情，作为一种行为上的感同身受，[而是]仅仅定义了共情的领域，[那个领域]是纯心理学的，与人的内在生活有关的领域，这种复杂的精神状态——精神分析的定义，我在很多很多年以前就已经提出过。我想，即便在我的一个主席演讲，我还是精神分析先生，处于精神分析运动的核心的时候，即便如此，我说的， [精神分析是]复杂精神状态的科学，[这个定义]绕开这个特定的理论，或那个特定的理论，不管这些理论有多重要。重要的一点是要意识到[定义我们的]研究[领域的时候，忽略特定的理论的必要性]，就像是在[与定义的联系]中，我们说，物理科学是研究因果关系、时间和空间的科学。绝对没有必要[明确地将特定理论包含在定义中]。有些物理科学与因果关系，时间和空间理论不符，但它们都是物理科学。因此，精神分析也是如此。
There is another reason why I want to go back to empathy—namely, that I have a sense of responsibility about the abuse of this concept. The fact again that people have acted as if I were abusing it makes me go up on a high horse, and say, "These idiots, they don't read what I write!" But again I should have listened. If they misunderstand (undoubtedly there are also irrational motivations, probably narcissistic ones, competitiveness, God knows what, I don't know, and I don't really want to make these dumb interpretations); the point is that if they misunderstand, other people must misunderstand, too. They will claim that empathy cures. They will claim that one has to be just "empathic" with one's patients and they'll be doing tine. I don't believe that at all! What do I believe?
还有另外一个让我回到共情这个话题的原因，那就是，我觉得自己对这个概念的滥用负有责任。人们表现得好像是我在滥用它，让我不得不摆出一副傲慢的姿态，说“这些傻瓜，他们误解了我写的意思！”但是我自己应该先听听他们说了什么。如果他们误解了（毫无疑问，其中也有非理性的动机，可能是自恋的动机，好胜心，天知道是什么，我反正不知道，并且我真的不想做这些愚笨的解析）；关键是，如果他们误解了，肯定还有其他人也误解了。他们会宣称共情有疗愈作用。他们会宣称，只要对他们的病人“共情”，他们就会好转。我完全不是那样认为的！那我是怎么认为的呢？
Before I go into the more exact practical statements aimed to contribute a little bit of antidote to the sentimentalizing perversions in psychotherapy about curing through love, through empathy, through kindness, through compassion, to just being there and being nice and "Yes, I understand you"; before I go into that, I think what I need to do, if I take you seriously, and I think I should, is to define empathy on the various levels on which this concept can be used. And having done that, I believe I can come back again and make clearer what I said in my most recent writings.
我要给精神分析中对通过爱，通过共情，通过善意，通过同情，只要在那里陪伴，并且说“是的，我理解你”来治疗的这样一种过于滥情的曲解来一针解毒剂；但是在此之前，我觉得我应该，如果我认真对待你们的话，我觉得我应该做的是给共情这个术语可以应用的各种层面下一个定义。在这样做了之后，我认为我可以再回到前面的话题，澄清我在自己最近的著作中所写到的东西。
Let me first talk about empathy very, very briefly in the way in which Iused it in the epistemological sense in 1959. In 1959 I used it, as the beautifulword goes (I never quite understood t, I looked it up sixteen times alreadyin the dictionary; I think by now I do know). In other words, in themost broadly based theorizing about a science, (and these are my words, Ialways like concrete and palpable words) in a most experience-distant way,a theorizing in the most experience-distant way about a science. As such,that may not be easy for many people to understand. And I thought aboutwhy. As such, it is a definer of the field and nothing else. External realityand the sciences that deal with external reality are defined by the operationalstance of the observer—namely, extrospection, and I will add fortheoretical reasons (although it plays a very small role in the physical sciences)vicarious extrospection, corresponding to empathy. In other words,we not only look at things theoretically, but we also listen to reports of peoplewho have looked at things that we can’t se either because we weren’tthere, we couldn’t be there, or because it is totally or forever impossible tobe there. Let us say, for example, scientists will instruct nonscientific astronautswhat to look for on the moon, what to keep their eyes open for, whatparticularly clearly to report about. When the astronauts come back, theygive their report (free association there is called debriefing), and the scientistevaluates now what he should do with the data. This is vicariousextrospection. [Regarding] events, I mean physical events for example, inthe ancient world, we have to rely on eye-witness accounts. When was thateruption of Vesuvius? Two different reports come in with slightly differentdates to e deducible from them. Now we can think “where is the greater evidence?”
让我首先非常简短地讲一下我1959年的时候，在认识论的意义上使用共情这个词的方式。在1959年，我用的就是这个美丽的词的本意（我从来没有完全理解它的意思，虽然我已经在词典上查它的意思查了16遍；但是我觉得现在我真的知道）。换句话说，对一门科学所做的最为广泛的理论化，（并且这些是我所使用的词，我总是喜欢具体的和可感知的词语）以一种最为远离经验的方式，对于一门科学所做的理论化。就这一点而论，很多人可能难以理解它的意思。而且我以前想过为什么会这样。它本身只是一个领域的界定，别无他意。外部的现实，还有处理外部现实的科学，是由观察者的可操作的立场来界定的，也就是，外省，并且我会算上出于理论原因（虽然它在物理科学中所起的作用很小）而做的替代性外省。换句话说，我们不仅从理论上观察事物，也会听一些观察过事物的人的报告——因为我们不在那里，我们不能在那里，或者永远都不可能在那里。让我们举个例子，科学家会教不是科学家的宇航员在月球上要观察些什么，要注意哪些迹象，要具体汇报哪些内容。当宇航员归来的时候，他们会作报告（这里自由联想变成了任务报告），然后科学家会评估他会怎么处理数据。这就是替代外省。关于事件，比方说物理性的时间，在古代社会，我们必须依赖于目击者的描述。维苏威火山是什么时候喷发的？我们获得了两份些微不同的报告，可以用来推断。现在我们可以想一想，“那个证据的可能性更大？”
It seems to me that's very, very similar to what the analyst does about the vicarious introspection of his patient. We cannot see what's going on in him. We instruct him to report what's going on in his inner life. Introspection, pursued in a very particular way, for prolonged periods, with due attention paid to all kinds of obstacles to reporting of things that are unpleasant to report. People in [history], let's say the Greek historians Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, they had axes to grind. You know one was conservative, pro Sparta; the other one was liberal, pro Athens. We have to know that, and then we'll take with a grain of salt what we read and what we really believe. So outpatients of course have axes to grind. Now mind you, I don't want to overdo analogies. I know tremendous differences [exist] too. I'm not suddenly forgetting my whole life as a listening psychoanalyst. I know how to listen to patients. So the analogies [should not be] overdrawn. But they have basic validity, I think. So really introspection and empathy are, in that sense, definers of the field. That means that they are defining our field as the inner life of man and therefore that we are psychologists.
对我而言，它似乎跟分析师对病人所做的替代内省非常，非常相似。我们无法看到在他身上正在发生着什么。我们指导他报告在他内心里正在发生的事情。内省以一种非常特别的方式进行，持续很久，这期间有些静思到的事情是人们并不乐意说出来的，人们对报告这种事情会产生各种障碍，而这些障碍正是我们应该关注的地方。历史上的人，让我们说说古希腊的历史学家们，希罗多德，色诺芬，修昔底德，他们都怀有私心。你们知道的，某个人是保守派就支持斯巴达，而另一个人是自由派就支持雅典。我们必须明白这点，然后我们就对书上写的和我们实际上相信的持一种保留态度。医院门诊病人当然也怀有私心。现在你们注意，我并不想过度类比。我也知道存在很大的不同之处。我没有突然忘掉我作为倾听的精神分析师的一生。我知道如何倾听病人。所以那些类比不会过分夸张。但是他们有基本的正确性，我认为。所以实际上，内省和共情是领域的界定者，在这层意义上。那意味着，他们正在定义我们的领域，作为人的内在生命，而正因此我们才是精神分析师。
I do not believe, however hard it was tried, that there is a possibility to create such a misalliance as psychobiology, or biopsychology, or something on that order. It was tried and the results of this attempt led to the worst distortions of the perception of man that psychoanalysis is guilty of: the introduction of the drive (not the experience of being driven, not a self lusting and wishing to kill—that's psychology); but "the drive," being processed by an apparatus, being tamed via influences of civilization on the ego that filters the drive. You know, I know my classical analysis so well; and that. . . [There was some laughter in the audience which interrupted Kohut, but then he responded to it] . . . no, I mean that, because I do think that my colleagues don't. They don't even know anymore what I am arguing about. But they have made compromises in a vague way. 1 never do that anymore, I never think that way anymore. I believe all that. But nobody has ever faced up to the issue as the issue deserves. Freud was a genius. This is no way of treating Freud—to by-pass him. Freud has to be respected for what he gave us, and what we can see about the shortcomings of what he did, from our vantage point. And I think that is the respectful attitude toward a genius of some time ago.
创造一个并不适当的结合，然后称之为精神生物学、生物心理学，或者其他类似的东西：无论如何我也不相信有这样的可能性。确实有人这么做了，结果导致了对人类知觉最严重的歪曲，而精神分析学对此也有责任，包括驱动力（不是被驱动的体验，也不是自体性欲和杀戮的欲望——这些都是心理学）的引入，并且认为驱动力是“某个器官的功能，被渗透于其并作用于自我的文化影响所驯服”。你们知道，我对我的经典分析方法非常熟悉；而且……【听众里出现一些笑声，打断了科胡特，但是他随后对此作出了响应】……不，我这么说，是因为我实在是觉得我的同行们对它并不熟悉。他们甚至一点不懂我在争辩什么。但是他们以一种含糊的方式做了折中。我再也不会那么做了，再也不会那么想了。我深信着那一切。但是甚至没有人按照应有的方式去面对那些问题。弗洛伊德是个天才。没有办法忽略弗洛伊德。弗洛伊德理应受到我们的尊重，我们从他那里获益良多，并且我们也可以看到他的方法中的缺点，站在现在的角度看。我觉得这种态度是对不久之前的一位天才人物的尊重。
Secondly, I would say that introspection and empathy should be looked at as informers of appropriate action. In other words, if you understand, "put yourself into the shoes of," think yourself appropriately into the inner life of another person, then you can use this knowledge for your purposes. Now I don't know how many times I have stressed that these purposes can be of kindness, and these purposes can be of utter hostility. If you want to hurt somebody, and you want to know where his vulnerable spot is, you have to know him before you can put in the right dig. That's very important. When the Nazis attached sirens to their dive bombers, they knew with fiendish empathy how people on the ground would react to that with destructive anxiety. This was correct empathy, but not for friendly purposes. Certainly we assume on the whole that when a mother deals with her child, and when an analyst deals with his patient, correct empathy will inform her appropriate maternal and his appropriate therapeutic analytic action. So [empathy] is an informer of appropriate action, whatever the intentions may he. That's clear, and I don't think it needs any further elaboration, I'm sure.
然后，我想要说，内省和共情应该被视为合适行动的先导。换句话说，如果你懂得，“把自己放进鞋里”，想像自己恰当地进入另一个的内心生活，然后你就可以运用这个方法达到你的目标。现在我不知道自己强调过多少遍，这些目的既可能是善意的，也可能让人产生敌意。如果你想要伤害某个人，想要知道他的弱点在哪里，那么在此之前你必须首先了解他。这是非常重要的。当纳粹给他们的轰炸机装上警报器时，他们带着残忍的共情清楚地知道，地上的人们会如何带着毁灭性的焦虑做出反应。这是正确的共情，但却是为了不友好的目的。当然，我们大体上可以想到，当一个母亲处理和孩子的关系，或者当一个分析师处理和病人的关系时，正确的共情会让人获知合适的母性行动或者合适的分析治疗行动。所以，共情是合适行动的先导，不管目的是什么。这是很清楚的，我并不觉得还需要任何详细阐述，我确信。
So, we go to the next of the levels in which we can examine empathy. Empathy serves also, and this is now the most difficult part—namely, that despite all that I have said, empathy, per se, is a therapeutic action in the broadest sense, a beneficial action in the broadest sense of the word. That seems to contradict everything I have said so far, and I wish I could just simply bypass it. But, since it is true, and I know it is true, and I’ve evidence for its being true, I must mention it. Namely, that the presence of empathy in the surrounding milieu, whether used for compassionate, well-intentioned therapeutic, and now listen, even for utterly destructive purposes, is still an admixture of something positive. In other words, there is a step beyond an empathy-informed hatred that wants to destroy you; and an empathyless environment that just brushes you off the face of the earth. The dreadful experiences of prolonged stays in concentration camps during the Nazi era in Germany were just that. It was not cruelty on the whole. (The Nazis were not sadistic or cruel in those camps. There were exceptions of course, it couldn’t be otherwise, there are always some exceptions; but that was clearly punished, that was clearly frowned on.[3]) They totally disregarded the humanness of the victims. They were not human, either fully not human, or almost not human (there was a little shift between, I think, the Jews and the Poles, or something like that, in that respect). That was the worst.
所以，我们进入下一个层次来考察共情。共情，——现在来到最困难的的部分——即，除我刚才所说的之外，共情本身在最广泛的含义上是一种有益的治疗手段，在这个词语的最广泛的含义上。这似乎反驳了我至今所说的一切，我是希望自己能够绕过它的。但是，既然它是真的，并且我知道它是真的，而且我可以证明它的真理性，那么我就必须提起它。 即，周围环境中共情的存在，无论是被用于慈悲的、出于好意的治疗，现在听好，甚至被用于完全有害的目的，也仍然包含了某种积极的东西。换句话说，有一个阶段超越了一种想要破坏你的共情了的憎恨，和一种想要让你脱离地球表面的无共情的环境。德国纳粹时期长久和可怕的集中营经历就是这种情况。大体上它并不严酷。（纳粹在那些集中营里并不是虐待狂式的或者残忍的。免罪方法当然存在，并且不是例外的情况，一直存在着一些免罪方法；但是那是被明确地惩罚的，那显然会引起纳粹的不悦。）完全不是人类或者几乎不是人类（这之间有一种小变化，我认为，即犹太人和波兰人，或类似的东西，在那一方面）那是最坏的情形。
There is a touching story—again I come back to the astronauts, you may remember it—of the astronauts when their spaceship, before landing on the moon, was hit by a meteorite, that's the theory. And they seemed to have lost control over it. And they had the choice, if there was indeed a loss of control, to go on circling for many, many weeks with their supplies, or to go back to Earth and—because they couldn't slow down—get scorched and burned up upon entering. As they were discussing this issue among themselves—there was no question in their minds: "We would never want to have our remains circle forever in empty space. Even if we burn up, it's Earth, it's our home." And that, I submit, stands for an empathic human milieu. There are many other examples that I could give you. I will not.
有一个动人的故事——我再一次回到了关于宇航员的故事，你们可能还记得——宇航员的飞船在降落到月球上之前，遇到了陨石的撞击，这就像那个理论。他们看起来要对飞船失去控制了。如果真的失去了对飞船的控制，那么他们会面临两个选择，或者带着他们的给养绕行很多很多天，或者返回地球——由于他们无法减速——在进入大气层时烧焦或焚毁。当他们互相讨论这个事情时，他们的心中是毫无疑问的：“我们绝不会让我们的遗骸永远飘荡在太空中。即遍我们被烧毁了，那也是在地球上，那是我们的家。”我提出，那代表了一种共情的人类环境。我还能给你们举出很多例子。不过我不再举了。
I will at this moment go a little bit on a side [trip] and talk about an aspect of my book that 1 consider to be quite an important one, namely, my differentiation between castration anxiety and disintegration anxiety; between the [fear of] loss of a prized part of the body and the [fear of] wiping out of the [whole] self. I won't talk about castration anxiety, everybody knows what that is. But disintegration anxiety is not so easy. Disintegration anxiety means the loss of empathy, the loss of an empathic milieu, the loss of an understanding milieu, not necessarily of the correct action, but the loss of any understanding. There are children with horrible mothers and fathers, misunderstanding their kids, reacting to them in horrible ways (oh. of course, they show the scars when they grow up); but the worst suffering I've seen in adult patients is in those very subtle, and difficult to uncover, absences of the mother—because her personality is absent. Nothing will be told about it, because the patient assumes this is the milieu in which people grow up. He had been made to feel guilty all his life for yearning for something else, for making demands. And the mother rightly made him [feel] guilty because he demanded something that just wasn't in her to give. It is the hidden psychosis of the mother, a much more frequent early circumstance, than has been understood. It is a psychosis of the mother that Kafka described so well in The Castle—the attempt to come close and yet there is absolutely no response; or in The Trial—the wish to know what he's guilty about. There is no guilt, he's just disregarded, the knife turns and he's—that's the end of him. Metamorphosis—the changing to an ugly insect because the parents in the next room speak of him in the third person singular—he's doing that, he's doing that, clearly excluding him. Sometimes the reports are very subtle and you have to be very, very perceptive to grasp them. In one of my patients, it was the mother's hiding behind bridge cards. Whenever he came, there were those bridge cards between him and her. But she had nothing to give. It is this emptiness that leads to the worst sufferings later in life.
我现在要稍微岔开这个话题来谈一谈我书里的一个方面，我认为很重要的一个方面，即，我对阉割焦虑和崩解焦虑的区分：对失去身体的一个重要的部分的恐惧，和对整个自体被摧毁的恐惧。我不准备谈阉割焦虑，每个人都知道那是什么。但崩解焦虑就没那么容易了。崩解焦虑意味着共情的失去，共情的环境的失，可理解的环境的失去，不必是正确行动的理解，而是任何形式理解的丧失。有些可怕的父母，他们误解着自己的孩子，用可怕的方式回应他们（哦，当然，他们会在长大后显示出这些伤疤）；但是我在成年患者中看到的最坏的情形是在那些非常微妙的、非常难于揭开的母亲的缺位——因为她的人格是缺失的。关于它没有什么会被谈论，因为病人假定了这是人们成长中所需的环境。这造成他终其一生都感到罪疚，由于对其他东西的渴望，由于产生某种需求。并且正是母亲使他感到罪疚，因为他所需求的东西并不在母亲所给予的里面。这是关于母亲的隐藏的精神病，一个比通常理解的常见得多的早期情况。这一种关于母亲的精神病，就像卡夫卡在《城堡》中描写的一样——尝试着靠近然而却完全没有回应；或者像《审判》中的描写——想要知道他为什么感到罪疚。并没有罪疚，他只是不予理会，刀子转动，而他——那就是他的结局。《变形记》——他变成了一只丑陋的昆虫，因为在隔壁的父母用第三人称单数谈论他——他在做这个，他在做那个，分明地将他排出在外。有时候得到的报告是十分微妙的，你必须运用非常非常强的知觉力才能捕捉到它们。以我的一个病人为例，桥牌的背后隐藏着他的母亲。无论他去哪里，总有那些桥牌处在他和他的母亲之间。但是她并没有什么要给。正是这种空缺将会导致他以后生活中最严重的痛苦。
Well now, how does all this fit with what probably is the most important point that I made in Hmv Does Analysis (hire? I submit that the most important point that I made was that analysis cures by giving explanations—interventions on the level of interpretation; not by "understanding," not by repeating and confirming what the patient feels and says, that's only the first step; but then [the analyst has] to move on and give an interpretation. In analysis an interpretation means an explanation of what is going [on] in genetic, dynamic, and psychoeconomic terms. I, for some reason, don't want to open the can of worms of Hartmann's adaptive point of view now—which I believe is a foreign body in analysis, however, brilliant this bridging concept to sociology may be. But I believe that the move from understanding to explaining, from confirming that the analyst knows what the patient feels and thinks and imagines (that he's in tune with his inner life), and the next step of giving of interpretations is a move from a lower form of empathy to a higher form of empathy. Interpretations are not intellectual constructions. If they are, they won't work; [they might work] accidentally, but not in principle. A good analyst reconstructs the childhood past in the dynamics of the current transference with warmth, with understanding for the intensity of the feelings, and with the fine understanding of the various secondary conflicts that intervene as far as the expression of these [childhood wishes and needs] are concerned. The paradigm, or should I rather say (because that's now a loaded word too, for some crazy reason), the prototype, the prototype of this shift—this two-step move from understanding to explaining—is, in childhood, a particular situation that I described, hopefully with feeling, in my new work, How Does Analysis Cure? I [cited there the example of] a child and his mother in the park. The child, as a young child always [does], clung to the mother. But the sun was shining, pigeons were walking around there. All of a sudden, the child felt a new buoyancy and daring and he moved away from the mother, toward the pigeons. He went three to four steps, and then he looked back. The general interpretation of that is that the child is anxious; he wants to be sure he can come back to be encased by the mother's arms again, cradled, etc. I think all that is true. But something much more important is true. He wants to see the mother's proud smile of his achievement. He wants to see her pride, "look at him moving out now, on his own, isn't it wonderful?" And at this moment something extremely important has happened. A low form of empathy, a body-close form of empathy, expressed in holding and touching and smelling, is now expressed only in facial expressions and perhaps later in words, "I'm proud of you, my boy." Now that's an interpretation, or at least it is the parallel to the interpretation in psychoanalysis. How? I told you already—there is understanding that is sort of like the bodily holding, a merger, and then that is given up later on (in some sick people it might take a long time before one can actually make the next step); and then as the next step is made, it is on a much higher form of empathy, empathy in a complex way, with [explanation of] the past and how the present repeats it, all the forces that are involved—and given careful expression, it's still empathy. It's still psychological (and in that sense on a higher level), [it is now an] understanding [of] the message. I think that's extremely important, and shows you that what you really need to investigate carefully is what I've come to call the developmental line of empathy—from its early archaic beginnings, to such high levels as barely touching, as barely still having any trace of the original holding that communicates the empathic understanding. So that essentially tells you what I think about empathy. It is something that I could talk about for a long, long time.
那么，所有这些与我在《精神分析治愈之道》中的观点——可能是我最重要的一个观点——相符合呢？那个我做出的最重要的观点，即分析治愈是依靠给出说明，在解释的层面上介入；不是依靠“理解”，不是依靠重复和确定病人有何感受或说了什么，那仅仅是第一步；而是依靠之后继续进行的分析和给出一个解释。在分析中一个解释意味着对正发生的事所做的一种说明，运用起源的、动态的和精神经济的术语。由于某种原因，我现在不想讲哈特曼的适应性观点这一复杂的问题，我相信那对于分析来说是一种外来物，然而也可能出色地打通了概念与社会之间的桥梁。但是我认为从理解到说明的跨越，从确认分析师知道病人的感受、想法和想象（这是与他的内心生活一致的）到下一步骤的给出解释，是一个从较低形式的深入到较高形式共情的跨越。解释并非智力的建构。如果它们是，那么它们就不会有效，可能会偶然有效，但基本上不会。一名好的分析师能够重新构建过去的童年，在移情的动力学中，运用热情、对情感强度的理解和对各种各样的次要的矛盾，一直到这些（童年的愿望和需求）表达被关心到。这样的范例，或者不如说（因为这也是一个负担过重的词汇了，由于某种疯狂的原因）标准形式，这一转换——从理解到说明的两个步骤——的标准形式，在童年中，是我描述过的一个种特别的情况，在我的新作品《精神分析治愈之道》中。我在那里引用了一个孩子和他的母亲在公园中的例子。那个孩子，就像小孩子经常做的那样，紧贴在母亲身旁。但是太阳闪耀着，鸽子在周围走来走去。突然间，那个孩子感到了一种新的心情并且大胆地离开了母亲身旁，走向那些鸽子。他每走三四步，就回头看一下。对此通常的解释是那个孩子有种担心，他想要肯定他能够回到母亲的怀抱中、摇篮中等等。我认为这些解释都是对的。但是还有一些更重要得多的东西。他想要看到母亲对他的成就展现出骄傲的微笑。他想要看到她的骄傲，“看着他走出去，依靠自己，这不是很精彩吗？”而在这一刻极其重要的事情发生了。一种低形式的共情，一种身体亲近形式的共情——表达为拥抱、接触和闻气味，现在仅仅通过表情就可以表达了，接下来或许更是仅仅通过词语，“我为你感到骄傲，我的孩子。”那是一种解释，或者至少是在精神分析学上是与解释平等的。怎么理解呢？我已经告诉过你们，有一种理解，就像身体的拥抱、一种联合这种，之后会被放弃（在一些病态的人们中可能会花很长时间才能进入下一步）；当下一步完成后，它便到达了一种更高形式的共情，一种复杂方式的共情，带着对过去的说明和现在如何重复它，这里所涉及的所有的力量——同时给出详细的表达，这仍然是共情。这仍然是心理学的（在更高层面的意义上），现在它是一种对信的理解。我想那是极其重要的，而且向你们展示了你们真正需要仔细探究的就是我称作共情的发展线的东西——从它早期的古老开端，到如此高水平，以至几乎不再需要接触，以至几乎不再有任何最初的拥抱来沟通共情的理解。这从本质上告诉了我认为共情是什么。它是一种我能够谈论很长很长时间的东西。
But as I said, and with that I want to close, I bring this up for many, many reasons. But one of the main reasons is the responsibility that I feel that you must not abuse the concept of empathy for vaguely supportive measures, but grasp the idea of what empathy is, in fact, on various levels of its development. Certainly I'm not stodgy, and I think the more one knows, the greater one's freedom. The more one knows, the less important some ritual that one sticks to anxiously, because no one knows what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. There is always the question of how to treat people with very serious self disturbances, who cannot possibly benefit from interpretations. I believe. It's too soon, and for many years, they do need an empathic understanding on the closest level that we can muster. And it does not mean that one cannot move naturally, slowly, and gradually into higher forms of empathy and explaining, much, much, much later on.
但是正如我说的，而且我想用它来结束的，我将其提了出来，出于很多很多种原因。但是其中一个主要的原因是我感到有责任，你们一定不要为了模糊的支持措施而滥用共情的概念，要抓住什么是共情这一观点，实际上，在各种各样的发展水平上。当然我不是平凡人，我认为一个人知道的越多，一个人的自由也就越多。一个人知道的越多，既有惯例就显得越不重要， 因为没有人知道什么是合适的和不合适的。如何对待拥有非常严重自体困扰的人们的问题一直存在，他们不能从解释中受益。我相信。它太快了，多年以来，他们需要一个共情的理解，在我们所能的最近的水平上。这并不意味着一个人不能自然地、慢慢的进步到更高形式的共情和解释，很久以后。
I remember, and I think I'll close my remarks this morning with this, I believe, telling story. About fifteen years ago I was engaged in a long, long analysis with a woman who was extremely vulnerable. She lay down on the couch the first time she came, having interrupted a previous analysis abruptly. She said she felt like lying in a coffin, and that now the top of the coffin would be closed with a sharp click. I'm telling it to you that way, because it expressed so well what she felt. She was deeply depressed, and at times I thought I would lose her—that she would finally find a way out of the suffering and kill herself. But I didn't. At one time at the very worst moment of her analysis, during the first year or perhaps year and a half, she was so badly off I suddenly had the feeling [and said]: "How would you feel if I let you hold my fingers, for a little while now while you are talking? Maybe that would help you." Doubtful maneuver. I am not recommending it, but I was desperate. I was deeply worried. So I gave her two fingers, moved up a little bit in my chair, gave her two fingers. And now I'll tell you what is so nice about that story. Because an analyst always remains an analyst. I gave her my two fingers. She took a hold of them, and I immediately made a genetic interpretation to myself. It was the toothless gums of a very young child clamping down on an empty nipple. That was the way it felt. I didn't say anything. I don't know whether it was right. But I reacted to it even there, to myself, as an analyst. [After this one occasion] that was never necessary anymore. I wouldn't say that it turned the tide, but it overcame a very, very difficult impasse at a given dangerous moment, and gaining time that way we went on for many, many more years with a reasonably substantial success.
我记得，今天早上我认为我将结束我的讲话，我相信，用讲故事的方式。大约十五年前我参与了一个很长时间的分析，对象是一名极其易受伤害的女性。第一次来的时候她躺倒在沙发上，此前曾经突然中断过一次分析。她说她感觉像是躺在一个棺材里，感觉观察的盖子将会带着剧烈的响声关闭。我以那样的方式向你们讲述，是因为它如此好地表达了她 感受。她深深地抑郁着，而且有时候我想我可能会失去她——她将最后找到一种逃离这种痛苦的方式，杀死她自己。但是我没有失去她。在分析过程的一个最困难的时刻，第一年或者也许一年半的某次分析中，她的情况是如此地糟糕，我突然有了一个感觉并且说道：“如果我让你握住我的手指你会感觉怎么样？持续一会儿，同时保持说话。也许那样会帮到你。”我并不确信能否成功。我并不是在推荐它，实际上我是孤注一掷。我深深地担心着。然后我给了她两个手指，在我的手臂上向上移动了一点，给了她两个手指。接下来我将告诉你们这个故事是如此美好。因为分析师永远是分析师。我给了她两个手指。她握住它们，我立刻给了自己一个起源学的解释。那是一个非常小的婴孩的没有牙齿的牙床对乳头的压力。那就是它给我的感觉。我什么也没说。我不知道这样做是否正确。但是我甚至在那里对它做出了反应，对我自己，作为一个分析师。这次之后，那就再也不不是必要的了。我不会说它扭转了局势，但是它克服了一个非常非常困难的僵局，在一个危险的时刻，而且为我们赢得了时间，使我们得以继续很多很多年，获得相当大量的成功。
So with that I think I will now close. I'm very glad you waited for me. I'm quite sure this will be the last self psychology meeting that I will attend, but I wanted to do my utmost to be able to go through with my promise. So, let's all hope for a good future for the ideas embodied in self psychology.
Good-bye.
我想我到此应该结束了。我非常高兴你们等待我。我非常确信这将是我参加的最后一次自体心理学会议，但是我想尽我的最大可能完成我的承诺。让我们一起希望自体心理学理念的具体化能有一个美好的未来。
再见
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[1]This article has been reprinted here with the kind permission of Paul H. Ornstein, Thomas Kohut, and the International Universities Press, for which the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology is deeply grateful：Kohut, H. (1981), On empathy. In: The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1978–1981, Vol. 4, ed. P. H. Ornstein. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, pp. 525–535.
本文经Paul H. Ornstein、Thomas Kohut和国际大学出版社的同意在这里转载，对此，《国际精神分析自我心理学杂志》深表感谢。
[2]Footnote as it originally appeared inThe Search for the Self.(Editor’s note: The following was transcribed from a recording of extemporaneous remarks made by Heinz Kohut at the 5th conference on Self Psychology at Berkeley, CA, in October 1981. This was Kohut’s last public address before he died just a few days later. These remarks would undoubtedly have been carefully edited by him afterward, to meet his standards for publication. They have only been minimally edited here [in brackets], to enhance clarity by deleting some repetitious phrases, a few extraneous asides, and to maintain proper grammatical standards. Editing was also held to a minimum, so as to retain the immediacy, informality, and emotional impact of Kohut’s delivery, even at the expense of some “inelegance” of style. An earlier transcript, prepared by Robert J. Leider,M.D., in September 1983, for the exclusive use of the Self Psychology Workshop at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, was helpful in the preparation of his version.)
最初出现在《自我的追寻》中的脚注。（编者按：以下海因茨·科胡特于是1981年10月在加州伯克利第5届自体心理学会议上即席发言的录音。这是科胡特最后一次公开演说，几天之后他便去世了。这些话语无疑是他后来精心编辑的，以符合他的出版标准。这里[括号内]只对它们进行了最低限度的编辑，以通过删除一些重复的短语、一些无关的旁白来提高清晰度，并保持适当的语法标准。作为一种“非正式”的表达方式，即使是为了保留“非正式”的表达方式，也是为了保留“非正式”的表达方式。本版参考了医学博士罗伯特·莱德（robertj.Leider）在1983年9月为芝加哥精神分析研究所（Chicago Institute for Psychology analysis）的自我心理学研讨会专门准备的一份更早版本。
[3][Editor's note: Neither the search of the literature nor eve-witness accounts substantiate either the absence of sadism or their punishment when these did occur. In fact, all eye-witnesses report frequent and most brutal sadistic acts without evidence of attempts to curb these or to punish the offender. Nevertheless. Kohut's basic thesis that the Nazis aimed at total dehumanization of camp inmates, before and during their extermination, is I hereby not altered.
编者按：无论是文学中的调查还是目击者的档案都不能证实在实行惩罚时不存在虐待行为。实际上，所有目击者都报告了经常性的和最残忍的虐待行为，没有证据显示这些行为得到过控制或惩制。尽管如此，科胡特关于纳粹在覆灭之前致力于将集中营里的人非人化这一基本论点，仍然是不用改变的。】他们完全不理会被害人的人性。他们不是人类
