Phenomenological review of the concept of empathy for Social Work

Abstract

In the 21st century, social work faces the challenge to establish, using its own language, its object of knowledge. In this work, we delve into the concept of empathy by looking into contributions from the fields of Social Work, Aesthetics, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and the Neurosciences. The purpose of this article is to clarify the meaning assigned to the concept of empathy in Social Work. It is not possible to characterize this concept without evoking its phenomenological foundations. We consider possible attributions of the concept that could contribute to understand iatrogenic situations derived from professional praxis. For the elaboration of the proposal, we developed a critical analysis of the concept of empathy, related to that of intersubjectivity, by carrying out a bibliographic review based on the aforementioned disciplines, covering a period from 1909 to 2018. Lastly, the position of "cognitive empathy" is proposed as a strategy for understanding the intersubjective process.