His assumption was that if a therapist shared his sexual orientation or ethnic group, there would be a kind of guaranteed basis for understanding or acceptance.

I did, in fact, refer him to an excellent colleague who happens to be gay, but the brief conversation left me troubled. All these patients who were searching for understanding had a misconception, I think, of what empathy is all about.

Image Credit... Hadley Hooper

What is critical to understanding someone is not necessarily having had his or her experience; it is being able to imagine what it would be like to have it. Thus, I do not have to be black to empathize with the toxic effects of racial prejudice, or be a woman to know how I would feel about being denied promotion on the basis of sex.

Contrary to what many people believe, being empathic is not the same thing as being nice. In fact, empathy can sometimes be put to a very dark purpose.

When the Nazis were bombing Rotterdam in World War II, for example, they put sirens on the Stuka dive-bombers knowing full well that the sound would terrify and disorganize the Dutch. The Nazis imagined perfectly how the Dutch would feel and react. Fiendish, but the very essence of empathy.

In the right hands, empathy has tremendous positive therapeutic force and can narrow what looks like an unbridgeable gap between patients and therapists.