Stein discusses and criticizes the various theories of empathy that were current at her time (and that perhaps are still held by many today). While she finds many insights developed by thinkers, such as Lipps and Scheler, that are helpful for the understanding of empathy, she also identifies a variety of problems. Specifically, by using anecdotal experiential examples, she shows that the empathic experience of another person’s experience is not some kind of outer or inner perception, or the imitation experience of someone else’s gestures associated with a certain feeling. It is true that the moods and feelings of those who are close to us may influence and affect our feelings and mood. If my spouse is in a bad mood, it may affect my mood too. Feelings and moods are contagious. Similarly, when a baby hears another baby cry, she may also start crying. But, Stein points out, these are not empathic acts. As well, she raises interesting questions about the nature of negative empathy: “Negative empathy: the case in which the tendency of the empathic experience to become a primordial experience of my own cannot be realized because “something in me” opposes it. This may either be a momentary experience of my own or my kind of personality” (Stein, 1989, p. 15).