Empathic Engagement in Clinical Practice

by Flemons, Douglas

• ISBN13: 9781433843365
• ISBN10: 1433843366
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-12-09
• Publisher: American Psychological Association

Summary

This guide for mental health professionals offers an insightful, conversational approach to mastering empathic communication with clients.
 
Douglas Flemons invites readers to join him in a dialogue that incorporates voices from clinical research and practice, philosophy (both Eastern and Western), neuroscience, and the arts.
 
He explains the nuts and bolts of empathy, and offers guidelines for how readers can make sense of the client’s thoughts, feelings, and choices from inside their worldview. He also shows how the clinician, with compassion, curiosity, and an empathic imagination, can create a heartfelt connection that allows the client to feel respected and understood and that opens the way for collaboration and therapeutic change.
 
Innovative strategies for therapist self-care are thoroughly explored. Practitioners learn how to effectively engage in and safely disengage from close empathic relationships, even with clients who are deeply suffering or who present complex emotional challenges.

Author Biography

Douglas Flemons, Ph.D., is a Canadian-American family therapist. Professor emeritus at Nova Southeastern University, he is an AAMFT approved supervisor and clinical fellow. He directed a family therapy training clinic for five years and created and directed a student counseling center for another six. Douglas is the author or co-author of five other books and 60 articles and book chapters, each of which develops and illuminates a systemic approach to learning and practicing brief therapy, clinical hypnosis, suicide assessment, academic writing, or qualitative research. He and his wife, with whom he co-edited a handbook on brief sex therapy, currently live in Asheville, NC, where they maintain an active private practice.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Invention, Evolution, and Differentiation of Empathy
Chapter 2. Empathic Curiosity
Chapter 3. Self-Care
Chapter 4. Orienting
Chapter 5. Engaging
References
Index
About the Author