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PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE

Letter to the father: Insights into Kafka’s understanding of empathy

Ana Carolina Romani1 ,  Mariana Santos1 ,  Samira Schultz Mansur2*
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1 Department of Psychological, Philosophy and Human Sciences Center, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
2 Department of Morphological Sciences, Biological Sciences Center, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
JCBP 2026, 4(1), 39–46; https://doi.org/10.36922/jcbp.6577
Received: 26 November 2024 | Revised: 17 March 2025 | Accepted: 20 March 2025 | Published online: 23 April 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Letter to the Father is an intimate and revealing classic masterpiece about the complex relationship between Franz Kafka and his father. In this work, he exposed his feelings and thoughts stemming from his daily family and professional life, rooted in the difficult paternal interactions he experienced. The study of empathy, which involves both emotional and cognitive dimensions, can be analyzed through this narrative. The aim of this study is to understand empathy as presented in Letter to the Father, with a focus on the cognitive and emotional aspects of this behavior. The specific objectives are to identify the emotional and cognitive aspects of empathy between the characters and to characterize these behaviors in Franz Kafka based on inferences drawn from his writing. This research is exploratory and bibliographic in nature, involving a literature review, reading, logical organization of data, thematic discussion, and writing, with an inductive methodology. It is suggested that this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between family experiences and the development of emotional and cognitive aspects of empathy while also emphasizing the importance of nurturing welcoming and respectful environments for healthy emotional growth.

Keywords
Empathy
Cognition
Emotion
Literature
Franz Kafka
Letter to the Father
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Journal of Clinical and Basic Psychosomatics, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4414 Print ISSN: 3060-8562, Published by AccScience Publishing
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