L'empathie, capacité à partager les émotions avec autrui, est reconnue comme un puissant moyen de communication interindividuelle et l'un des éléments clés dans la relation thérapeutique. Elle est au coeur de la perspective humaniste en psychologie clinique, qui est généralement considérée comme la moins scientifique. L'approche naturaliste développée dans cet article avance l'idée que l'empathie repose sur des mécanismes de traitement de l'information qui ont été façonnés au cours de l'évolution permettant une communication implicite avec autrui et qui seraient à la base de l'intersubjectivité. Cette perspective s'articule avec les théories de l'esprit (théorie de la simulation et théorie théorique) qui tentent de rendre compte, chez l'homme, de la capacité à comprendre les autres comme des agents intentionnels, c'est-à-dire dotés d'intentions, de désirs et de croyances. Dans ce contexte, l'empathie peut être considérée comme un processus de simulation nécessaire pour comprendre autrui mais pas suffisant pour interpréter son comportement.

Empathy is the ability to share emotions with others. It is acknowledged to be a powerful means of tacit communication, a key ingredient in any therapeutic relationship as well as in psychotherapy. Empathy is the cornerstone in the humanist perspective (Ego-psychology) in clinical psychology. This approach is often considered as poorly grounded on scientific and objective evidence. It is however acknowledged that empathetic therapists are more effective than less empathetic therapists. I shall argue that this paradox, i.e. it is the least scientific and the less validated psychotherapeutic approach that is the most efficient, can be eliminated if one considers the nature of empathy, its biological foundation, its evolutionary origin and its cognitive architecture. In this paper I will suggest that empathy is based on specific information processing modules which have been designed by natural selection to cope with social regularities in expressing and reading emotional states. This has provided adaptive benefits to individuals living in large groups bestowing them with mechanisms for cooperativity, altruism and more generally various aspects of prosocial behaviour. The capacity to express emotions, and to read and understand emotions of others also ensures implicit communication with others and may be at the root of intersubjectivity. This perspective on empathy is then articulated with two concurrent hypotheses regarding theory of mind (the simulation and the theory-theory) which aim to explain the human capacity to understand that the behaviors of other intelligent agents are caused by intentions, desires and beliefs. In this context, empathy can be considered as a simulation (or analogical) process that is necessary to understand but not sufficient to interpret other people. This last issue is relevant to clinical practice.