Abstract
The first part of this study dissociated sympathy and love from all empirical-psychological phenomena in which a radical disconnection from "the other" or a radical identification with "the other" was in evidence. In phenomena such as infectious imitation, the reproduction of one's own past experience and a projection of that experience towards another, the multiple forms of self-deception, there is a fundamental failure on the part of one to recognize the other precisely as other. This same failure to recognize the other as other is evident in all forms of idiopathic and heteropathic identification, as well as metaphysical views of reality which are basically monistic. These phenomena were isolated and clarified for the purpose of indicating by way of negative contrast an essential character of sympathy and love, namely, the perceptive orientation towards the other as other. Where sympathy and love are concerned there is never a radical disconnection between the one and the other, nor a radical identity. A "distance" is maintained between one and the other in both sympathy and love, which affirms and preserves the integrity of each in a relational unity.