Empathy : a history / Susan Lanzoni.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I Empathy as the art of movement -- The roots of einfühlung or empathy in the arts -- From einfühlung to empathy -- Empathy in art and modern dance -- Part II Making empathy scientific -- The limits of empathy in schizophrenia -- Empathy in social work and psychotherapy -- Measuring empathy -- Part III Empathy in culture and politics -- Popular empathy -- Empathy, race, and politics -- Empathic brains.

"A surprising, sweeping, and deeply researched history of empathy--from late-nineteenth-century German aesthetics to mirror neurons Empathy: A History tells the fascinating and largely unknown story of the first appearance of "empathy" in 1908 and tracks its shifting meanings over the following century. Despite empathy's ubiquity today, few realize that it began as a translation of Einfühlung or "in-feeling" in German psychological aesthetics that described how spectators projected their own feelings and movements into objects of art and nature. Remarkably, this early conception of empathy transformed into its opposite over the ensuing decades. Social scientists and clinical psychologists refashioned empathy to require the deliberate putting aside of one's feelings to more accurately understand another's. By the end of World War II, interpersonal empathy entered the mainstream, appearing in advice columns, popular radio and TV, and later in public forums on civil rights. Even as neuroscientists continue to map the brain correlates of empathy, its many dimensions still elude strict scientific description. This meticulously researched book uncovers empathy's historical layers, offering a rich portrait of the tension between the reach of one's own imagination and the realities of others' experiences."--Provided by publisher.

Print version record.

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