Empathy is the ability to understand another person's subjective condition, including emotions. Depending on culture, emotions are expressed differently, hence there might occur difficulties for one person to understand emotions in another if they belong to different cultures. This study explores how depression is described in western psychiatry, compared to alternative cultural forms of similar conditions. Building on how the understanding of the client's emotions is shaped in the psychiatric meeting, the limit of empathy is discussed as well as what might influence the understanding of another person's emotions. Two limits of empathy are revealed, both depending on differences in the individuals relation to the surrounding world. The first limit is found in differences between emotions, the second limit is related to differences in experience due to when they are based in either emotional or cognitive conceptions. The conclusion of this study is that the scientific thinking and the cognitively based understanding of emotions changes the comprehension of them – from being interpreted as a way to relate to the world to being interpreted more as characteristics within the individual. Consequently, the possibility to empathetically understand the other's emotions diminishes.