Levels of empathic response

Empathic understanding is a counseling technique that receives attention in many of the training programs that are charged with producing helping personnel. Although empathic understanding is widely taught, there is very little commonality among trainers in terms of what they teach their students to be empathic to. In this article the author presents a general conceptual set that may be applied to any statement a person makes. The set is comprised of six elements to which helpers can be empathic and to which they can respond. The elements are concrete and specific and lend themselves well to systematic training.