Your friend experienced a negative event i.e. break up of an important relationship. You are trying to experience how your friend is feeling. You are trying to take her / his perspective of the entire situation. Identify the term used to refer to this :
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Empathy
Option (1) Empathy — Correct. Empathy is present when one is able to understand the plight of another person, and feel like the other person. It means understanding things from the other person’s perspective, i.e. putting oneself in the other person’s shoes, as you do when you try to feel your friend’s pain and see the break-up as she/he sees it. It is different from sympathy, where one feels pity but cannot feel like the other person.
Option (2) Therapeutic relationship — Incorrect. This is the special relationship between the client and the therapist, also called the therapeutic alliance. Empathy enriches such a relationship, but the relationship itself is not the act of taking someone’s perspective, and a friend is not one’s therapist.
Option (3) Unconditional positive regard — Incorrect. It is the therapist’s positive warmth that does not depend on what the client reveals; the therapist goes on accepting the client without judging, whatever she/he has done. It is acceptance, not feeling the situation from the other side.
Option (4) Professional relationship — Incorrect. The bond between client and therapist is a professional relationship with a contractual nature: it exists for the purpose of helping the client and lasts only as long as the therapy. It names the kind of bond, not the act of understanding a friend’s feelings.
NCERT (2025-26): “Therapeutic Relationship … This relationship has several unique properties. It is a trusting and confiding relationship. The high level of trust enables the client to unburden herself/himself to the therapist and confide her/his psychological and personal problems to the latter. The therapist encourages this by being accepting, empathic, genuine and warm to the client. The therapist conveys by her/his words and behaviours that s/he is not judging the client and will continue to show the same positive feelings towards the client even if the client is rude or confides all the ‘wrong’ things that s/he may have done or thought about. This is the unconditional positive regard which the therapist has for the client. The therapist has empathy for the client. Empathy is different from sympathy and intellectual understanding of another person’s situation. In sympathy, one has compassion and pity towards the suffering of another but is not able to feel like the other person. Intellectual understanding is cold in the sense that the person is unable to feel like the other person and does not feel sympathy either. On the other hand, empathy is present when one is able to understand the plight of another person, and feel like the other person. It means understanding things from the other person’s perspective, i.e. putting oneself in the other person’s shoes.…” |