Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being

共情：一种未被欣赏的存在

Carl R. Rogers, Ph.D. Center for Studies of the Person La Jolla, California

(The Counseling Psychologist, 1975, Vol. 5, No. 2-10)

卡尔·罗杰斯博士,加州拉荷亚人的研究中心

《咨询心理学家》1975年，第5期

It is my thesis in this paper that we should re-examine and re-evaluate that very special way of being with another person which has been called empathic. I believe we tend to give too little consideration to an element which is extremely important both for the understanding of personality dynamics and for effecting changes in personality and behavior. It is one of the most delicate and powerful ways we have of using ourselves. In spite of all that has been said and written on this topic, it is a way of being which is rarely seen in full bloom in a relationship. I will start with my own somewhat faltering history in relation to this topic.

这篇文章的主题是，我们应该重新检验和评估这种被称为共情（empathic）的与他人共处的特殊方式。我认为，我们对这一元素关注太少，而其对我们理解人格动力以及产生人格和行为的改变都极为重要。这是我们使用自身（ using ourselves）的最为微妙和有力的方式之一。尽管这一主题经常被讨论和表述，但是作为一种存在方式，很少见到它在关系中全面展开。下面将开始讲述我关于这一主题的几分艰难历程。

Personal Vacillations

个人的徘徊

Very early in my work as a therapist I discovered that simply listening to my client, very attentively, was an important way of being helpful. So when I was in doubt as to what I should do, in some active way, I listened. It seemed surprising to me that such a passive kind of interaction could be so useful.

在我作为治疗师的早期生涯中，我发现仅仅是倾听我的来访者，全神贯注地倾听，就是一种重要的有效方式。所以，当我不确定该以某种主动的方式做些什么的时候，我就只是倾听。令人惊奇的是，这样一种被动的交流方式竟如此有用。

A little later a social worker, who had a background of Rankian training, helped me to learn that the most effective approach was to listen for the feelings, the emotions whose patterns could be discerned through the client's words. I believe she was the one who suggested that the best response was to "reflect" these feelings back to the client-- "reflect" becoming in time a word which made me cringe. But at that time it improved my work as therapist, and I was grateful.

后来，一位有着兰克学派（Rankian）背景的社会工作者，帮助我了解到最有效的方法是倾听来访者的情感、情绪，通过他们的言语可以辨别出他们的互动模式。我相信她的建议是，最好的回应便是把这些情感“反映”（reflect）给来访者——“反映”立即成了我奉承的一个词。但是，那时它帮助了我作为治疗师的工作，因此我心存感激。

Then came my transition to a full-time university position where, with the help of students, I was at last able to scrounge equipment for recording our interviews. I cannot exaggerate the excitement of our learnings as we clustered about the machine which enabled us to listen to ourselves, playing over and over some puzzling point at which the interview clearly went wrong, or those moments in which the client moved significantly forward. (I still regard this as the one best way of learning to improve oneself as a therapist.) Among many lessons from these recordings, we came to realize that listening to feelings and "reflecting" them was a vastly complex process. We discovered that we could pinpoint the therapist response which caused a fruitful flow of significant expression to become superficial and unprofitable. Likewise we were able to spot the remark which turned a client's dull and desultory talk into a focused self- exploration.

再后来，我转到全职的大学岗位，在学生的帮助下，我终于能够找到一些设备来记录我们的面谈。当我们簇拥在能够听见自己的机器身旁，反复播放着一些疑点——会谈中明显出错的地方或那些来访者明显前进的时刻，此时我无法形容我们学习时的激动心情。（我仍然认为这是一种提升治疗师自己的最好方式。根据这些录音里的许多经验教训，我们逐渐认识到倾听情感并“反映”它们，是一个极为复杂的过程。我们发现，我们可以指出那些导致富有成效的重要表达变得肤浅和无效的治疗师回应。同样，我们也能够指出那些把来访者的呆滞和散漫变成专注的自我探索的标记。                     

In such a context of learning it became quite natural to lay more stress upon the content of the therapist response than upon the empathic quality of the listening. To this extent we became heavily conscious of the techniques which the counselor or therapist was using. We became expert in analyzing, in very minute detail, the ebb and flow of the process in each interview, and gained a great deal from that microscopic study. But this tendency to focus on the therapist's responses had consequences which appalled me. I had met hostility, but these reactions were worse. The whole approach came, in a few years, to be known as a technique. "Nondirective therapy," it was said, "is the technique of reflecting the client's feelings." Or an even worse caricature was simply that, "in nondirective therapy you repeat the last words the client has said." I was so shocked by these complete distortions of our approach that for a number of years I said almost nothing about empathic listening, and when I did it was to stress an empathic attitude, with little comment as to how this might be implemented in the relationship. I preferred to discuss the qualities of positive regard and therapist congruence, which together with empathy I hypothesized as promoting the therapeutic process. They too were often misunderstood, but at least not caricatured.

在这样一种学习环境下，我们很自然地强调治疗师的回应内容，而不是倾听的共情程度。这样一来，我们变得过于看重咨询师或治疗师的技术。我们变得熟练于分析，擅长分析每一个微小的细节，每一次面谈的起伏过程，并且从微观研究中获取大量的资料。但是，我们专注于治疗师回应这一趋势的影响使我感到震惊。虽然我曾遇到一些敌意，但是这些反应更为糟糕。一些年之后，这全部的方法被认为是一种技术。“非指导性治疗”，它被认为“是一种反映来访者情感的技术。”或者，更为糟糕的讽刺直接说道，“在非指导性治疗中，你就重复来访者所说内容的最后几个词。”我们方法被完全地扭曲，这使我感到非常震惊，因为一直以来，我对共情性倾听几乎没有说过什么；而且，当我在共情的时候，我强调的是一种共情的态度，至于在关系中它可以如何实施几乎没有发表意见。我更愿意讨论积极关注和治疗师一致性的质量，我假设它们与共情一起会促进治疗过程。虽然它们也经常遭到误解，但至少不是讽刺性的。

The Current Need

当前的需要

Over the years, however, the research evidence keeps piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent and certainly one of the most potent factors in bringing about change and learning. And so I believe it is time for me to forget the caricatures and misrepresentations of the past and take a fresh look at empathy.

然而，多年以来，研究证据持续增多并有力地指出，关系中高度的共情可能是引起改变和学习最有效的因素，至少确定是最有效的因素之一。因此，我相信现在是时候了——忘记过去的讽刺和误解，并以新的眼光来看待共情。

For still another reason it seems timely to do this. In the United States during the past decade or two many new approaches to therapy have held center stage. Gestalt therapy, psychodrama, primal therapy, bio-energetics, rational-emotive therapy, transactional analysis are some of the best known, but there are more. Part of their appeal lies in the fact that in most instances the therapist is clearly the expert, actively manipulating the situation, often in dramatic ways, for the client's benefit. If I read the signs correctly I believe there is a decrease in the fascination with such expertise in guidance. With another approach based on expertise, behavior therapy, I believe interest and fascination are still on the increase. A technological society has been delighted to have found a technology by which a man's behavior can be shaped, even without his knowledge or approval, toward goals selected by the therapist, or by society. Yet even here much questioning by thoughtful individuals is springing up as the philosophical and political implications of "behavior mod" become more clearly visible. So I have seen a willingness on the part of many to take another look at ways of being with people which evoke se/f-directed change, which locate power in the person, not the expert, and this brings me again to examine carefully what we mean by empathy and what we have come to know about it. Perhaps the time is ripe for its value to be appreciated.

还有一个原因表示这样做似乎是合乎时宜的。在美国过去的一二十年里，许多新的治疗方法占据了中心舞台。其中最为知名的有：格式塔治疗、心理剧、原始治疗（primal therapy）、生物能量（bio-energetics）、理性情绪疗法、交互分析（transactional analysis），但是还有更多的疗法。它们的吸引力部分在于这一事实：在大多数情况下，很明显治疗师是专家，为了来访者的利益，经常以戏剧性的方式主动地操纵着情境。如果我正确地理解了未来的迹象，我相信，人们对这种专门技术指导的着迷会有所减少。至于另一种基于专门技术的方法——行为治疗，我相信，人们对其的兴趣和着迷仍然在增加。一个技术的社会乐于发现一门技术，凭借它，人的行为可以向着治疗师或社会所选定的目标被塑造，即使没有他的理解或同意。不过，即使在这里，哲学和政治对“行为方式”的影响变得越来越明显，一些有思想的个体还是提出了许多质疑。所以，我已经看见一种意愿，许多人采取另一种方式看待人们的存在，这种方式带来自我指导式的改变，它寻找当事人（而不是专家）身上的力量，这使我又一次仔细地检查共情到底是什么，我们对它又了解了多少。也许现在时机成熟了——去赏识共情的价值。

文章由同行协同翻译，仅供专业学习，后续内容与此相同。来源：http://site.douban.com/156230/