1. a lack of understanding of another person’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. In self psychology, a parent or caregiver’s repeated empathic failure toward a child is thought to be a potential source of later psychopathology, such as narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. 2. in psychoanalysis, a situation in which a patient feels misunderstood by the therapist or analyst. Compare attunement; misattunement. [first described in 1966 by Austrian-born U.S. psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut (1913–1981)]