Empathy between psychology, neurosciences and phenomenology: psychopathological, clinical and therapeutic aspects from an intersubjective perspective

In recent years, the phenomenon of empathy has become central to those scientific research areas which once were remote from this sort of typically “psychological” subjects. Rediscovering empathy, as a basic phenomenon of human experience in certain strictly scientific field, fosters the meeting between neuroscience and phenomenology. This represents a challenge to all those psychologists and psychiatrists who do not trust the dimension of feeling and the lived experience as a research area. The development of empathy in a strong intersubjective perspective is the background of several therapeutical approaches with psychotics and addicts and severe personality disorders, based upon the shared experience of “betweeness”.