Empathy and Resilience. Phenomenological Investigations into the Resilience Potentials of Interpersonal Resonance

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The project analyzes empathy as a medium of interaction and mutual understanding between people and extrapolates the potential for resilience enabled by empathy. Empathy is a concept widely discussed in philosophy, psychology, life sciences and social sciences, but used in varying definitions. The function of empathy for the interactional constitution of resilience has not yet been sufficiently addressed. How does empathy affect the endurance and shaping of experienced crises? To what extent does the empathy of caring persons and the joint negotiation of problem factors in such critical situations contribute to their processing? On the basis of a theory of embodied intersubjectivity and a hermeneutic reconstruction of the core meanings of empathy in different areas of discourse, the aspect of mutual resonance in the fields of care represented in the research group (psychotherapeutic treatment, pastoral care, spiritual care, palliative medicine) will be investigated. A multidimensional model of empathy (which comprises bodily, affective, and cognitive components) as well as a systematic segmentation of levels of self-experience (from the embodied to the interpersonal to the narrative self) enables a differentiated view of the intersubjective constellation. In previous research, the connection between empathy and resilience has at best been investigated indirectly by showing that, on average, resilient personalities have a high capacity for empathy. Based on this, TP3 pursues the goal of clarifying which methods of medical and pastoral care in the face of life crises address which levels of self- and world-experience and which professionally habitualized empathy services can accompany this. In addition, the epistemological significance of the empathy construct in the interdisciplinary research context between medicine and theology will be reflected upon. The theoretical analysis and conceptual sharpening can then be linked to the empirical knowledge of the other subprojects on specific forms of crisis progression and the respective possibilities for empathic intervention.