Carl Jung on Empathy
Empathy:
An introjection of the object, based on the unconscious projection of subjective contents. (Compare identification.)
Empathy presupposes a subjective attitude of confidence, or trustfulness towards the object. It is a readiness to meet the object halfway, a subjective assimilation that brings about a good understanding between subject and object, or at least simulates it. [“The Type Problem in Aesthetics,” CW 6, par. 489.]
In contrast to abstraction, associated with introversion, empathy corresponds to the attitude of extraversion.
The man with the empathetic attitude finds himself . . . in a world that needs his subjective feeling to give it life and soul. He animates it with himself. [ Ibid., par. 492.]
