Empathy as a professionally important quality of master students of psychological counseling course

In the current system of training psychologists, as a rule, more attention is paid to the development of the trainees' intelligence and the provision of the necessary level of knowledge, and less importance is given to the development of personal qualities necessary for psychological counseling. In this regard, the problem of shaping the necessary personal and professional attributes in counselling psychologists during higher education is a key issue in modern psychology of higher education. One of the professionally relevant personal characteristics that a counselling psychologist should possess is empathy. In this regard, the aim of the present study was to theoretically substantiate it as a professionally important quality of the personality of future counseling psychologists, as well as to investigate the peculiarities of empathy of master students of various training areas. The authors offer the results of a comparative analysis of the levels of empathy formation among master students in different areas of professional training. Proven that future counselling psychologists are significantly more empathic towards strangers and unfamiliar people, owing to their professional openness to outsiders as well as their willingness to build up communication with them and serve their further development as professionals.