Stage of ego development as a correlate of ability in discrimination and communication of empathic understanding

The purpose of this study was twofold: to test the assumption of a linear relationship between stage of ego development and level of empathic understanding, and to compare low and high subjects' gain scores in ability to empathize after a 20-hour training program. Twenty-nine female and 11 male graduate students enrolled in a beginning course in counselor education contributed data. The Loevinger Sentence Completion Test was administered to obtain scores for stage of ego development; Carkhuff's Index of Communication and Index of Discrimination of empathic understanding was administered to obtain pre- and posttest scores for ability to empathize. The training consisted of ten hours of lab training in 75-minute sessions and ten hours of take-home work over a period of one semester. An adapted version of Carkhuff's training model was utilized, incorporating didactic (lecturettes), experiential (role-playing) and modeling types of experience supervised by five doctoral students in counselor education. [...]Education, College o