This work aims to be educational in a brain-storming way about the role of empathy in the community and the market for empathy services. Hanna Holborn Gray has said that “education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.” I hereby also add: The intention of education is to expand one’s empathy. Amazingly enough that is not as comfortable as many people might imagine, which brings up to the first trend – resistance to empathy.
Here is the short, half day course on Empathy, Stress (Reduction) and Neural Science delivered at the Joe Palombo Center for Neuroscience at the Institute for Clinical Social Work on December 03, 2016. The image depicted is the punchline to… Read More ›
The image depicts a mirror neuron admiring itself in the mirror. But do mirror neurons even exist? If not, what is the underlying neural implementation mechanism for empathy? At another level of analysis, how is empathy like oxygen for the… Read More ›
the word itself in English “empathy” was not invented until a Cornell University psychologist, Edward Bradford Titchner, was translating (1895) one of the innovators who are credited with founding psychology as a science, namely, Wilhelm Wundt – and Titchener invented the word “empathy” to translate the German “Einfühlung”.
The Secret Underground Story of Empathy Course on Empathy (University of Chicago Graham School): Tuesday September 27, 2016 6 – 8:30 pm 450 Cityfront Chicago 60611 (and seven sessions thereafter – no class on Oct 11th) Further info and Register… Read More ›
Virtual reality (VR) is coming to psychotherapy. The one thing that immediately occurred to me: Psychotherapy invokes a virtual reality all its own – even without goggles. This is especially the case with dynamic psychotherapy that activates forms of transference in which one relates to the therapist “as if” therapists in conversations that have aspects of a past or future person or reality.
When one experiences the lack of empathy as a boundary issue or even a boundary violation, including a dignity violation, then the response is narcissistic rage in an attempt to get back one’s own and re-establish the boundary. I suggest this is a primitive, primary process response that is rarely well thought out or even all that adaptive – except perhaps in a context of self-defense against an immediate danger – but it is a common response. This does not jive with the average everyday understanding of empathy but it is the heart of the matter: wherever there is empathy – can narcissistic rage be far behind?
