Review: Empathy and Mental Health by Arthur J. Clark
As a young man, Arthur J. Clark heard Carl Rogers speak and was inspired to devote his life’s work to applying empathy in education, counseling, and talk therapy.
Recent Posts
-
Review: Empathy, Embodiment, and the Person: Husserlian Investigations of Social Experience and the Self by James Jardine
Okay – the photo is kinda scary, but he is a really kind man. Will empathy solve the problem? Husserl himself withheld the manuscript of Ideas II from publication. He was not satisfied with the results, having been accused of succumbing to the problematic philosophical dead-end of solipsism, the inability to escape from the isolated self, knowing only itself.
-
On Guns: Historical Empathy and Strict Constructionism of the US Constitution
Whatever the Founding Fathers intended with the Second Amendment, they did NOT intend: Sandy Hook. They did not intend Uvale, Columbine, Buffalo, NY, Tops Friendly. They did not intend wiping out a 4th grade class using automatic weapon(s).
-
Review: How to think more about Sex by Alain de Botton
De Botton is absolutely on point in asserting that neither sex nor love should require us to lie in order to get them. Definitely tell the truth – including to yourself. Yet the way sex and love (affection) fall apart is concerning. How does when bring them together? See http://www.EmpathyLessons.com
-
Left stranded when the music stops: What to do about the shortage of actually available talk therapists
Left standing when the music stops: The shortage of available talk therapists and what to do about it: Read complete post: http://www.Louagosta.com [lower right, below the vidoes]
-
Empathy in Time of War – Red Team, Red Team!
In time of war, the power of empathy consists in putting yourself in the shoes of the enemy, thinking like the enemy, and thereby anticipating and thwarting the enemy’s moves.
-
The Empathy Diaries by Sherry Turkle (Reviewed)
As Tolstoy famously noted, all happy families are alike. What Tolstoy did not note was that many happy families are also unhappy ones. Figure that one out! Sherry’s answer to Tolstoy is her memoir about the successes and breakdowns of empathy in her family of origin and her subsequent life.
-
Top Ten Empathy Trends For 2022
A new year and a new virus variant? Being cynical and resigned is easy, and the empathy training is to drive out cynicism and resignation – then empathy naturally comes forth. If given half a chance. People want to be empathic. The prediction is that with a rigorous and critical empathy (and getting a very high percent of the population vaccinated), we are equal to the challenge.
-
The holocaust of sex, entitled: The Right to Sex by Amin Srinivasan (Reviewed)
Srinivasan’s book is the holocaust of sex. The fires of the “holocaust” in question are not ones of passion or desire, but rather of anger and rage. Note the small “h” this time since there is only one Holocaust with a capital “H”. This holocaust is filled with the suffering of innocents, widespread injustice, and an awful lot of violence. It accurately paints a picture so bleak that further consciousness raising will likely expand our consciousness of misery and pain, nor do I here want to debate the need for it.
-
Empathy and the Novel by Suzanne Keen (Reviewed)
A significant aspect of the interest in relating empathy and the reading of fiction is to make the world a better place. Read some quality fiction; expand one’s empathy; and take action to improve the world. Wouldn’t it be nice?
-
Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 2): “CEO” now means “Chief Empathy Officer”
Empathy is one of those things that are hard to delegate. This role shows up like another job responsibility with which the CEO of the organization is tasked—along with everything else that she already has to do. As if she did not already have enough alligators snapping at various parts of her anatomy, one has to be nice about it, too? But of course empathy is not niceness, though it is not about being un-nice. It is about knowing what others are experiencing, because one has a vicarious experience and then processing that further to expand boundaries and exercise leadership.
-
Empathy versus bullying: The biggest bully in my life
Since the bullying is a boundary violation, the way to reestablish empathy and order (where “order” means common courtesy) is to reestablish the boundary between persons.
-
The Natural Empath Encounters the Good Samaritan
Cross the street away from the neighbor to “down regulate” your empathy, and experience less empathic distress; and cross the street towards your neighbor to expand your empathy in the direction of creating an inclusive community of persons, who recognize the value of cooperation.
-
Perform a Readiness Assessment: A Rigorous and Critical Empathy
Empathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time for it. Empathy is never needed more than when it seems the budget does not allow for it. Empathy is never needed more than when the cynicism and resignation about life, whether in the family or the corporate jungle, are so thick you can’t catch your breath.
-
Review: Empathy and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past by Thomas A. Kohut
Kohut’s definition of empathy is a rigorous and critical one. Empathy is a mode of observation that gives one access to the thoughts and feelings of other human beings as subjects. Key term: subjectivity. Empathy is the foundation of intersubjectivity and that intersubjectivity has a temporal horizon extending from the past into the future.
-
Empathy is the New Love
If empathy is the new love, what then was the old love? A bold statement of the obvious: the old love is akin to a kind of madness. The one who is in love is hypnotically held in bonds by an idealization by the beloved. In one way, love presents as animal magnetism, a powerful attraction; in another way, in a quasi-hypnotic trance, love idealizes the beloved, and, overlooks the would-be partner’s shortcomings and limitations.
-
Top 10 Empathy Trends in 2021
It’s gettin’ crowded under the bus. We confront the paradox of “embracing” our socially distanced neighbor. There is something about humans that makes us want to breathe on one another. Empathy? There is nothing that says an empathy trend has to be positive – but don’t try and hold your breath. Expanding neighborliness is the ultimate empathy trend.
-
Empathy and the True Believer
It is a high probability you are dealing with a True Believer when, in the face of a setback to the Belief System (whether religion, political party, social movement, or spiritual cause) the adherent to the cause Doubles Down. Key term: double down.
-
Noted in passing: Arnold Goldberg, MD, innovator in self psychology and empathy (1929-2020)
Arnold I. Goldberg, MD (1929-2020) was an innovator in psychoanalysis and self psychology, a prolific author (really prolific!), an inspiring educator, and simply a wonderful human being.
-
A Rumor of Empathy is now a podcast (series)
A rumor of empathy learns about a report of an alleged example of empathy in the work, actions, or conversation of a person or organization. I then reach out to the person and talk to them in detail about the work they are doing to confirm or disconfirm the validity of the rumor.
-
Freud and empathy: Lost in translation
Freud is explicit about his commitment to empathy. He writes and publishes the following: It is certainly possible to forfeit this first success [in therapy] if one takes up any standpoint other than one of empathy such as moralizing (“Further… Read More ›
-
A Lazy Person’s Guide to Empathy, the book, now available: Expand empathy in the community and individual today!
Empathy: A Lazy Person’s Guide is a light-hearted look at a significant and engaging matter: how to expand empathy in the individual and the community – and do so without working too hard. The Guide includes twenty eight illustrations by… Read More ›
-
Online therapy now. Now is the time.
If ever there was a time for online (tele/cyber) talk therapy, this is it. In case you were trekking through Tibet or living in a cave with Buddhist monks, allow me to clarify why. Key term: social distancing. It is… Read More ›
-
Top 10 Empathy Trends for 2020
10. Empathy is the new love. You know how in fashion gray is the new black? Same idea. Empathy is the new love. What people really want is to be “gotten” for who they authentically are as a possibility. In… Read More ›
-
The one-minute empathy training (no kidding!)
[Listen to a version of this post with bonus material on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1OvEwkDD9b3IH66erzehnM?si=MeQ6C1uTQDyYGuAUGbegBw ] People want to know: Can empathy be taught? People complain and authentically struggle: I just don’t get it—or have it. In spite of the substantial affirmative… Read More ›
-
Review: “No Visible Bruises” Refers to Strangulation
The title of Rachel Louise Snyder’s eye-opening, powerful, page-turner of a book, No Visible Bruises, refers to strangulation [No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019: 309 pp, $28(US)]. Some… Read More ›
-
Review: Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) – and Empathy
The reader in Chicago may say that’s fine, but what has it got to do with the situation here in the USA? We do not have child soldiers or wide spread traumatized populations. Think again. Gangs are recruiting children of tender age not only as messengers but also as triggermen, because they know youngsters will face a different criminal justice system and process, generally more lenient, than adults.
-
Three books on empathy: The good, the bad, and the ugly
The first empathy book reviewed here is very good indeed. William Miller’s Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding (Wipf and Stock, 114pp, ($18US)) is a short book. Admirably concise. My short review is that, as I am author of… Read More ›
-
A Critical Review of a Philosophy of Empathy
You don’t need a philosopher to tell you what empathy is; you need a philosopher to help you distinguish the hype and the over-intellectualization from a rigorous and critical empathy. Every parent, teacher, health care worker, business person with customers,… Read More ›
-
Top 7 Empathy Lessons in Leadership: The Video Replay
In the webcast the participants will engage how to:
• Distinguish empathy from compassion, forgiveness, pity, and “niceness”;
• Establish and maintain boundaries with bullies, slackers, difficult individuals, and friends while still honoring one’s commitment to empathy, to client service, to flourishing financially, to inclusiveness and community;
• Identify failures (breakdowns) in empathy and what to do about it; and
• Expand or contract empathy on demand by overcoming obstacles to empathy. -
Top 30 Empathy Lessons for Life, the book
This book contains some thirty (30) empathy lessons for life. A key empathy lesson that explicitly addresses empathy training: remove the resistance to empathy—obstacles such as cynicism, shame, guilt, aggression, narcissism, devaluing language, and so on—and empathy spontaneously shows up, comes… Read More ›
-
12 Top Radio Shows on Empathy
Here are twelve (12) top radio shows on empathy. Lou Agosta interviews thought leaders in the community about work they are doing that expands empathy. Note: interviews are edited to delete the commercials. Biographical information about the speaker and interviewer… Read More ›
-
Empathy Triple Play: 3 books on empathy: hear about the book that got me thrown out of the local institute for psychoanalysis
Empathy is oxygen for the soul. Short of breath? Maybe one needs expanded empathy. Get some – along with a light snack – at this event.
-
Plato Not Prozac!
The neurochemical reshaping of personality has had many unanticipated consequences. I acknowledge that the debate is not ended by the Chapter in my A Rumor of Empathy on “Plato Not Prozac,” the name of which is hereby acknowledged to be from… Read More ›
-
9 Steps to Recovery From Domestic Violence (DV) – One Picture
If the survivor can feel safe enough to express what happened into an empathic receptivity in the context of a trusting environment that does not retraumatize by skepticism and cross-examination, then the abuse, the boundary violations, and the perpetrations, begin… Read More ›
-
10 Top Tips and Techniques for Expanding Empathy
Join me [Lou] for an on the air conversation on Empathy Radio focusing on top tips and techniques for expanding ones empathy. Click here to play the show: 10 Top Tips and Techniques for Expanding Empathy. The main tip and… Read More ›
-
Emerging Adulthood and Empathy
Join Lou Agosta and his special guests Drs. Jesse Viner and Dale Monroe-Cook for an engaging conversation about the emotional, psychological, and human challenges of emerging adulthood. Drs. Viner and Monroe-Cook address these issues with their clients as Medical director and… Read More ›
-
Lessons Learned: Update in the Battle Against Domestic Violence
Three women a day die as the result of domestic violence [DV] (nnedv.org). Join me for an “on the air” conversation with Radhika Sharma, education coordinator at Apha Ghar (Our Home, ApnaGhar.org) on the VoiceAmerica Empowerment Internet radio channel (click… Read More ›
-
Galileo’s Middle Finger: What Happens When Science Collides With “Empathy” (in Quotation Marks)
Join me for a conversation on Radio Empathy (click here for podcast on Spotify) with Alice Dreger about the conflict between scientific evidence and some interpretations of social justice and “empathy” (in quotation marks). Dreger starts out as a graduate student exploring… Read More ›
-
Listening to Killers by James Garbarino – An Interview with Lou Agosta
Join me for an “on the air” interview with Jim on the VoiceAmerica Empowerment Internet Radio network [click to listen]: A Rumor of Empathy in Listening to Killers – with replay available shortly after April 22nd. James Garbarino presents lessons… Read More ›
-
Empathy: What it is and why it matters
Join me for an engaging, live “on the air conversation” with David Howe, author of Empathy: What it is and why it matters. David Howe begins with the idea that empathy humanizes people and their relationships. Empathy is about our shared… Read More ›
-
A Rumor of Empathy: Rewriting Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, the book, now available….
Here is the short version of the short version: The deep, underground history of empathy is surfaced and reconstructed in Hume, Kant, Lipps, Freud, Scheler, Stein, and Husserl. A rumor of empathy is engaged in vicarious feeling, receptivity, empathic understanding, empathic interpretation, and… Read More ›
-
A Rumor of Empathy in the Struggle Against Domestic Violence (Update: 2014-03-21)
Here is a sixteen minute educational video produced and edited by yours truly featuring Serena Low, Executive Director of Apna Ghar (“Our Home”) which operates a shelter and crisis hot line for women in Chicago. She nets out a forty… Read More ›
-
Heidegger’s Special Hermeneutic of Empathy in Being and Time…the Movie
This educational video includes a presentation by Lou Agosta on Heidegger’s call for a special hermeneutic of empathy in Heidegger’s book Being and Time. The different aspects of such a Heideggerian inquiry into and definition of empathy are spelled out… Read More ›
-
A Rumor of Empathy…in Mud and Squalor…the Movie
“Mud and Squalor” is the nick name of the US Army Air Corps base out of which in 1943 David James and his mentor, Carroll Langston, flew P-51 single engine, pursuit aircraft during World War II. Mr. James talks about… Read More ›
-
A Rumor of Empathy at Apna Ghar in the Fight Against Gender Violence …. the Movie
This is an on camera interview with Serena Low, Executive Director, Apna Ghar (“Our Home”), captured on December 13, 2012. Apna Ghar (“Our Home”) operates a Hot Line and Shelter for women who are dealing with domestic abuse, intimate partner… Read More ›
-
Heidegger on the Emotions in the Rhetoric of Aristotle
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… Read More ›
-
Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, the book and comments on it
I am humbled by the comments of my colleagues, friends, and associates. “An insightful and provocative exploration of a topic that has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves and the conceptual clarity needed for a proper understanding…. Read More ›
-
Review: Freud, the Reluctant Philosopher by Alfred Tauber
Freud attended the lectures of Franz Brentano in Vienna in 1874. Brentano was committed to establishing psychology as an empirical science based on the analysis of intentionality as the defining feature of consciousness. Brentano’s approach excluded the possibility of an unconscious as a realm of intentions unknown to the subject.
-
Transference and Empathy: Where Transference Was Empathy Shall Be!
The title statement echoes Freud’s celebrated slogan “Where id was, ego shall be!” Neither of these statements is an “either or” proposition. Freud did not propose to replace the id with the ego. It is not even clear what that could possibly mean. The idea is to expand the influence, control, and power of the second term over the first one. The ego expands its power; likewise, with empathy.
-
Revolution of the Ordinary by Toril Moi (Reviewed)
Moi’s book uses Wittgenstein as a path to reading literature, asserting, like Wittgenstein, that “nothing is hidden.” It turns out that quite a lot is “hidden in plain view.” The “hermetic of suspicion” is roundly critiqued by Moi, but, I assert, in way uncharitably. Find out the details.
Featured Categories
Empathy ›
-
Review: Empathy and Mental Health by Arthur J. Clark
September 10, 2022
-
On Guns: Historical Empathy and Strict Constructionism of the US Constitution
May 26, 2022
talk therapy ›
-
Review: Empathy, Embodiment, and the Person: Husserlian Investigations of Social Experience and the Self by James Jardine
July 5, 2022
-
Review: How to think more about Sex by Alain de Botton
May 10, 2022
empathy consulting ›
-
Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 3): Let’s do the numbers
November 14, 2021
-
Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 2): “CEO” now means “Chief Empathy Officer”
November 4, 2021
Empathy Lessons 