Jan 2011
Call it empathy,
called it emotional compassion, call it ‘putting yourself in the other person’s
shoes,’ call it what you will; at the heart of the matter it is knowing the
essence of the other. It is recognizing the realness of the humanity, in its complexity,
of the other person in their flesh and blood.
We are not born having
empathy, for it is something we usually grow into. As little children we start to recognize what another person
is feeling from cues such as facial expressions, laughter, or crying, and how
they might be responding from various contexts or situations, like cutting a
finger. At first we may experience the distress of the other person as our own
distress (their tears are our own)
– which can be overwhelming, but then we develop something called reflective
empathy where we gradually learn how to helpfully deal with the suffering of
others. This reflective empathy may eventually develop into altruistic
behaviour. Altruistic behaviour is where you act for the benefit of another
person, without necessarily seeing their discomfort first.
So what does this word
empathy actually mean, and is it
adequate in its present form? Does it actually connote a much deeper
interrelational process?
The word empathy is a relatively recent
concoction combining two Greek roots, pathetos
referring to “suffering” and the prefix em
referring to “in”. As such, the whole word means “in-suffering”. The dictionary defines it as ‘mental
entering into the feeling or spirit of a person or thing’ as well as an
‘appreciative perception or understanding’. But is it merely mental? It is useful to dig deeper into the
origins of the word.
The term empathy was coined by Titchener in 1909
to serve as a translation to the German word einfühlung, which had been appropriated by a man named Lipps in 1903, to be applied
in a psychological context. Einfühlung was originally used in the study of aesthetics
to describe the way in which observers are able to project themselves into a
work of art or a thing of beauty. To know the grain of the art work within the
body of the perceiver. The Greek word aisthetikos meaning "sensitive, perceptive," from aisthanesthai
"to perceive (by the senses or by the mind) is origin of aesthetics. So
the origins of both words, empathy and aesthetics, are far from being
understood as arising from wholly mental processes.
Unfortunately, as with
the drift of the study of aesthetics to an elitist value-driven critical study
of the beautiful, so the word empathy
has moved from the realm of sense-perception, of knowing in your bones, to a
moral cognitive one. No longer concerned with our participation in another’s
sufferance as part of a matter of knowing the essence of the other, the term
has come to mean anything from an imagined feeling with the other person to a
communicated by parallel-felt distress. Thus a group I’ve come across known as
“Laws of Attraction” adherents can say that as empathy is a mental
activity, taking on the negative
emotions of others is a harmful practice because you are attracting those same
negative circumstances into your own life. Better, they say, to empathize with
people who have what you want!!! There goes any consideration of the needs of
others and any reason whatsoever for working towards a more equable world, and
here comes a totally selfish way of being, where all work is for the
satisfaction of ourselves. The spiritual dimension of empathy, which is what I
know as “knowing the essence of another”, has been abandoned by these “Law of
Attraction” crowd, for the pursuit of self gratification.
Choosing not to be
empathic and not knowing how to be are two different things. It is possible to
learn how another person feels. In my clinical practice when something of this
nature comes up, I might get them (M.) to “put on the shoes” of the other
person they are not “getting” and speak the words the other person might say,
using “I” words (swapping roles around).
For example, “I can’t seem to make sense of M.,” “I feel M. is missing
me; she’s not feeling my pain.” “M. just wants things all her way…” Something often happens, a sparkle of
recognition occurs. A small bit of awareness of the other person twinkles into
being and broadens and shifts the whole feeling situation and changes the way
they interact with this other person.
Knowing the essence of
the other is a deep process. It is much more lovely than a mere cognitive
acknowledgement of another’s being. It is a whole body, mind, spirit, sharing
that allows us to not only acknowledge the rights of others to their unique
experiences, but puts us firmly into being here on earth ourselves in
inter-relationship with them. Knowing the essence of another is being with them
in a vital, sensitive way; it is being here-now with zing and being in
community with the capacity for interactive sharing.
