I am an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at UCLA, formerly focused on international trade, finance, and gender economics. Since receiving my doctorate in psychoanalysis, I became fascinated by Adam Smith’s moral philosophy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and interested in the roles that sympathy and empathy play in interpersonal relations. Though he is known as the father of modern economics, Smith also developed a psychological theory of morality. The foundation of his moral theory is sympathy, an experience based on imaginatively putting oneself in another’s shoes and feeling something like what they feel. Both empathy and sympathy are important ways of understanding, caring, and being kind to those around us. My current work is focused on investigating both concepts, finding commonalities and divergences, and working to interconnect their uses. I bring such views into my practice, where I consider empathetic listening a crucial component of therapy and psychoanalysis.