For many of us, an empathic stance towards our patients forms the foundation of how we practice.  This paper problematizes the typical psychoanalytic conceptualization of empathy as requiring the analyst to find something in themselves that resonates with the patient’s experience. Self-reference, it is argued, is both a limiting and potentially colonizing stance towards the patient’s otherness. Leaning on learnings from queer theory, Black studies, French philosophy, and the Black American theater, this paper argues for a revised empathy anchored in the concept of passibility rather than self-reference.

Sam Guzzardi, LCSW is a member and graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York and a faculty member at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies.  He has a diverse practice where he is curious about questions of queerness, identity, development, and trauma, and has recently published papers in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Psychoanalytic Dialogues.  His 2022 publication “The Only Fag Around: Twinship in Gay Childhood,” which details his attempt to integrate Kohutian and Freudian principles in the treatment of a gay man, was the winner of the Ralph E Roughton Paper Award.  Sam’s scholarship often revolves around his interest in comparative psychoanalysis and in placing psychoanalytic theory in dialogue with ideas from other traditions, including disciplines such as queer theory, post-colonial studies, performance studies and literature.

For inquiries regarding the LGBTQ Study Group please contact 

Esin Egit, PhD: e.egit@wawhite.org

Willa France: poetadmiral@earthlink.net