Listening With Empathy

September 14, 2011

The Chicago Empathy Project is Live!

Filed under: Emotions,Empathy,psychotherapy,talk therapy — Lou Agosta @ 12:24 pm
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The commitment of the Chicago Empathy Project (CEP) is to expand the application of empathy in human relatedness. In particular, the commitment is to provide an opening for the exchange of ideas in a context of empathic human relations by delivering motivational presentations, inspirational conversations, training, workshops, and psychotherapy services to the professionals in the mental health, education, and business communities. This post is a call for participation and an invitation to provide leadership in designing and implementing the Chicago Empathy Project (CEP).

The CEP project acknowledges and promotes the value of empathy engaging competing approaches to restoring emotional well being including Talk Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and psychopharmacology. All three benefit from a foundation in empathy. The possibilities for interdisciplinary networking and interdisciplinary research are significant based on a foundation in empathy. Lining up the optimum therapy with a given individual remains an interdisciplinary art requiring experience, skill, and learning. However, the pendulum has swung far-too-far away from the breakthrough results of the work on empathy (initiated by Heinz Kohut and his colleagues including Michael Basch, Arnold Goldberg, Mark Gehrie, and Ernest Wolf). Empathy is alive and well at dedicated centers of excellance such as The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis where Kohut made his mark. But few know about this or have access to it, notwithstanding generous out reach programs. Other dedicated mental health professionals are becoming the shoe maker’s children, living off the worried well. Even psychiatrists (MDs) with a psychodynamic interest find it hard to practice talk therapy (psychotherapy) due to market pressures, declining insurance reimbursements, and the mis-education of the public to expect behavior modification and psychotropic pills to be a silver bullet. Personal dissatisfaction, emotional upset, and despair over the future are growth industries.With apologies to Melanie Klein (a famous psychoanalyst), the CEP refuses to endorse the paranoid position. There is nothing wrong. However, there is something missing – empathy. Expanded empathy is the requirement and commitment.

The Chicago Empathy project bears witness to one fundamental approach: absent a warm, generous, empathic listening, psychotherapy is hard to distinguish from dental work. It can be painful. A gracious, generous, empathic listening provides access to the inner, emotional life of the other person and, with conditions and qualifications, can jup start the process of emotional healing and recovery. This extends (once again with conditions and qualifications) to applications of CBT and psychopharmacology, especially given the side effects of the latter. Though empathy is not a silver bullet (even as the search for one continues), empathy makes a profound difference in the quality of the caregiver-patient experience, the quality of the student-teacher relationship, and the quality of the consumer-business engagement. As every mother of a newborn, every parent, and every caretaker knows, empathy is a natural ability with which all human beings are born; no university degree or license is required to be empathic, though training and education can make a substantial difference in developing the competence. The Chicago Empathy project empowers people through conversations, presentations, workshops, and one-on-one psychotherapy to expand the use of empathy in human relatedness. The result is developing zones of human understanding, possibility, relatedness; the unblocking of obstacles to personal growth and the restarting of human potential and growth; and the transformation of suffering and emotional upset into creativity, humor, wisdom, and expanded empathy.  Full disclosure: This project is a work in progress and its creation and implementation are the result of the contributions of the engaged, participating community. Full disclosure: as I write this, I do so as someone who has been on both sides of the therapist/patient interface as well as the therapist/client one. It is going to sound a tad like bragging here at the backend but if not now when? … Additional qualifications for commenting on what to look for in an empathy project is that my works on empathy are footnotes in Goldberg, Wolf, and Basch (see bibliography below).  This project charter is not complete nor is my knowledge and experience; all the usual disclaimers apply; so the reader’s [your] feedback, criticism, experiences, impertinent remarks, and contribution are hereby requested. This project needs – a web site of its own; a high profile leader with name recognition; individual narratives of how empathy makes a difference; brain storming; speaking opportunities; consulting engagements; training assignments; community engagement. Please let me hear from you.

Bibliography

Agosta, Lou. (2010). Empathy in the Context of Philosophy.London: Palgrave/ Macmillan.

__________. (1984). “Empathy and intersubjectivity,” Empathy I, ed. J. Lichtenberg et al.Hillsdale,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Press.

__________. (1980). “The recovery of feelings in a folktale,” Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 1980: 287-97.

__________. (1976). “Intersecting language in psychoanalysis and philosophy,” International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Vol. 5, 1976: 507-34.

Basch, Michael F. (1983). “Empathic understanding: a review of the concept and some theoretical considerations,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 31, No. 1: 101-126. (See p. 114.) .

Gehrie, Mark (2011). “From archaic narcissism to empathy for the self: the evolution of new capacities in psychoanalysis,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 59, No. 2: 313-333.

Goldberg, Arnold. (2011). “The enduring presence of Heinz Kohut: empathy and its vicissitudes,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 59, No. 2: 289-311. (See  pp. 296, 309.) .

Kohut, Heinz. (1984). How Does Analysis Cure? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wolf, Ernest S. (1988). Treating the Self.New York: The Guilford Press. (See pp. 17, 171.)

This post and all contents of this site (c) Lou Agosta, Ph.D. and the Chicago Empathy Project

April 5, 2010

Heidegger on Aristotle and the Emotions in the Rhetoric

Filed under: Emotions,Hermeneutics,Philosophy — Lou Agosta @ 10:27 am
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In BEING AND TIME, Heidegger famously notes that the analysis of the affects (pathe) has taken barely one step forward since book II of Aristotle’s RHETORIC (H139). This Hot Link is an essay on this subject published in Philosophy Today (Dec 2010) – click following here - AgostaHeideggerIssue4 2010-Agosta

The occasion for this reengagement with the possibility of a ‘step forward’ is the availability of Heidegger’s lecture course at the University of Marburg in 1924 on the Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. This course includes a detailed analysis of book II of the RHETORIC as volume 18 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe (2002) just translated (2009). Here Heidegger’s penetrating but sparse remarks in BEING AND TIME on Befindlichkeit [‘affectivity’] are deepened and implemented in his reading of Aristotle’s RHETORIC.

The relevance of this reengagement is direct. The dominant view of the affects in contemporary philosophy is arguably the position that affects are an unclearly expressed proposition, including the cognitively articulated propositional attitude. The position of this short paper is that the modern propositional account of the affects is cleared away by and does not survive a reading of Heidegger’s volume 18 on book II of Aristotle’s RHETORIC.

Lest someone think this is a trivial matter, the long and distinguished tradition going back to the Stoics in which affects are indistinct cognitions that require clarification is well articulated in modern times by Anthony Kenny and then in Martha Nussbaum’s monumental Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Please click on the above-cited essay for further details. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

January 21, 2010

The Recovery of Empathy in a Folktale

Filed under: autism,Einfühlung,Emotions,Empathy,Hermeneutics,Philosophy,Psychoanalysis,Self — Lou Agosta @ 1:01 pm
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A wonderful example of empathy and its absence is documented in one of the fairy tales (Märchen) of the collection edited by the Grimm Brothers. “The Story of the Youth Who Set Out to Learn Fear” is about a youth – the classic simpleton of the folktale – who tries to learn what shuddering is (i.e., fear in the sense of “goose flesh”). The hero-simpleton tries so hard to feel fear that he is effectively defended against all feelings. He has no feelings, not even fear. He is insensitive to others’ feelings in the everyday sense. Thus, he lacks empathy and the corresponding aspects of his being human (humanness). He is also ontologically cut off from the community of fellow travelers who share feelings empathically and on the basis of which life matters to them (and him). This deficiency occasions a misunderstanding in the narrative with the sacristan at the local church, and the youth throws the latter down the stairs, resulting in the youth’s disgrace and banishment. As in all classic folktales, the hero goes forth on a journey of exploration of both the world and of himself. He becomes a traveler on the road of life, which is the beginning of his ontological adventures to recover his feelings and become a complete human being.

For those interested, here is further detail on the story itself.  Märchen von Einem der auzog das Fürchten zu lernen,  translated as “The story of the youth who went forth to learn what fear was” in The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tale, (1814/17), ed. W. Grimm and J. Grimm, tr. M. Hunt and J. Stern. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972: 29f. “Grüseln” means literally “to shudder” or “get the creeps,” “goose bumps,” a classic physical expression of fear. In the Anthropology (1797: §16; 33; 154), Kant calls out “The thrill that comes over us at the mere idea of the sublime and the gooseflesh [grüseln] with which fairy tales put children to bed late at night are vital sensations; they permeate the body so far as there is life in it.” The point is, anyone lacking such an experience, as depicted in the Märchen, is hardly alive, is an emotional zombie.  Bruno Bettelheim does not call out the link with empathy in his treatment of this folktale in his The Uses of Enchantment ((1975) New York: Alfred Knopf: 280-82); though, as I recall, Professor Bettelheim did make the connection in classroom discussion that I attended at the University of Chicago in the Spring of 1975. On the relevance of folktales to philosophy see, L. Agosta. (1978). “Kant’s treasure hard-to-attain,” Kant-Studien, Vol. 69, No. 4, 1978: 422-443; and also L. Agosta. (1980). “The recovery of feelings in a folktale,” Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 1980: 287-97. Meanwhile….

The point is that empathy is not an obscure capability that requires elaborate technology to make it visible, as when researchers deploy a functional magnetic resonance imaging apparatus (fMRI) to correlate mirror neurons (though we can learn from the latter too). Rather empathy hides in plain view. This folktale, this Märchen, is in fact a ghost story, to be told on dark, windy autumn nights. The empathy of the audience is aroused by constellating fearful images of the living dead. This makes for a series of humorous encounters with ghouls and haunted castles as the youth sets about trying to learn shuddering – compulsively saying “I wish I could shudder,” having no idea what it means. The hero performs many brave deeds instead – as he is literally not sensible enough to grasp the distinction “fear” and recognize when he should be afraid. The ghost story provides a framework for images of the disintegration and fragmentation of the self, including literal ghoulish images of bowling with detached heads and a corpse that rises from the dead because the youth gets into bed with it to warm it up – a scenario quite creepy – against which the youth is firmly defended by his complete lack of feeling. None of these images and events matter to him in the way they would matter to an affectively, emotionally whole person. He is surrounded by ghouls and living corpses but, ontologically speaking, he is the one who is an affective zombie, emotionally dead. Without empathy, the individual is emotionally cut-off, i.e., dead.

The subtext of the story is that the individual cannot recover his humanity on his own. He requires the participation of another – and a relationship with the other – to restore the being human (humanness) of his feelings – and to teach him how to shudder. Having raised the curse on the haunted castle and won the hand of the fair princess, the hero finally stops trying to shudder. Only then is he overcome by shuddering at the first opportune occasion. On the morning after his wedding night – his new wife teaches him shuddering – no, this is not going where you think – she teaches him shuddering in a pun that cleverly masks the physical and sexual innuendo – she throws bowl of cold water filled with gold fish on him with the flipping gold fish included – he wakes up exclaiming that “Ach, yah, now finally I know shuddering!” Now he is finally a whole, enriched, and complete human being. Here is the original essay – caution the word “emapthy” does not occur in this essay. However, I suggest that empathy is what immediately underlies the capacity for feeling that forms the pivotal challenge faced by the protagonist in the folktale. For more details see -

JRHRecoveryFeelingFolktaleAgosta

November 29, 2009

Empathy and the Emotions: Unexpressed Emotions are Incomplete…

Filed under: Emotions,Empathy,Hermeneutics,Philosophy — Lou Agosta @ 4:29 pm
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Join me today for a conversation that engages the issue of how unexpressed emotions are incomplete. The emotions constitute information processing that operates in parallel with cognition (intelligence). Translation between these two differing systems occurs frequently, but emotions are not reducible to propositional (cognitive) attitudes. On background, the overall approach to the emotions of the position in this post is that emotions are not a natural kind: There is nothing necessarily in common between basic emotions, social pretenses, and irruptive motivational reactions (“moral sentiments”).  Of course, the reader will recognize tha Paul Griffiths has explored this approach, which is hereby acknowledged. With this background in place, the argument of this post is that unexpressed emotions are incomplete across all the different kinds. Empathy, as form of receptivity to the expression of emotion, implies an invitation to unexpressed emotions to attain completeness. This position is recommended to escape from the paradox that an unexpressed emotion does not exist. The occurrent but unexpressed emotion with its inchoate, emerging affective (felt) component – not a mere disposition – exists in interesting and important ways that are engaged. This position also escapes from the paradox that emotions, expressed or unexpressed, must have an affective (felt) component.  Many emotions have a readily identifiable affective (felt) component, but by no means all. Three paradigm cases (and subcases) are explored in detail in the attached unpublished paper [actually an unpublished book chapter not included in Empathy in the Context of Philosophy (Palgrave, 2010) ] and used to drive the argument. The lack of expression is just as significant, though less obvious, than that of expression and arouses an empathic receptivity. The point is that the observation of small details, including empathic receptivity to micro expressions, informs the interpretive activity of empathic understanding providing as it were the means of a raid on the inarticulate. Additional consequences and the resulting dynamics of this discovery—unexpressed emotions are incomplete – for empathy are explored in this  attachment:    CH04EmpathyandEmotionsUnbound20090112  Please give the benefit of your feedback.

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