Still, it is one thing to feel for someone else; it is another to, in some sense, become them. Is it possible to take this exchange too far — merging with another at the expense of our own authentic self-hood or the possibility of a genuine relationship? Martin Buber refused to use the word empathy because he objected to any connotation that the self could — or should— become lost in the experience of the other. "A great relation exists only between real persons," he wrote, "one must truly be able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth."

Marc Ian Barasch, Field Notes on the Compassionate Life