What is Empathy?
"There is no capacity to be judgmental or to be moralistic or to be indignant about the patient once one experiences what is happening to the patient as one's own."
Erich Fromm
"To withhold one's self as a person and to deal with the other person as an object does not have a high probability of being helpful."
Carl Rogers
In the therapeutic dyad an important challenge exists for the African American psychotherapists treating White patients who express racial bias toward African Americans. The practice of psychotherapy seeks to assist a patient in living more consciously, which is evidenced to lead to emotional health. Psychotherapists are generally well-educated and trained in the ability to support the patient in this endeavor. The African American psychotherapist is obligated to treat all patients responsibly and ethically. Treating any patient in the psychotherapeutic dyad requires empathy, a major aspect of the therapeutic treatment.
Empathy is a term often used to describe an important aspect of psychotherapy. In the therapeutic dyad, the ability to express empathy is considered important to the healing process. However, there are instances when the ability to express empathy may be very difficult, complex, and challenging. This is especially relevant in the context of the therapeutic dyad where there is racial bias. But what is empathy?
A number of theorists define empathy. Throop (2010) conveys the notion that empathy consists of a "range of intersubjective experiences" that fluctuate from "moments of connection to moments of disconnection, from feelings of mutual understanding, attunement, and compassion to feelings of confusion, misalignment, and singularity when confronting the, at times, impenetrability of others' and our subjective lives" that are informed by culture and individual perspective (p. 771). Thus, empathy is a complicated and uncharted process that traverses the ebbs and flows of human emotion between people. Sometimes this process enhances connection and understanding. Other times this process creates great distance and discord. In addition, empathy is a phenomenon that requires the participation of the person who empathizes and the person who seeks to be understood. This is a process that occurs over time.
Hollon (2008) posits empathy is an intersubjective process that occurs between individuals where both parties are seeking to be understood. Empathy "is embedded in an intersubjective encounter that necessitates ongoing dialog for its accuracy" (Hollon, 2008, p. 475). In other words, empathy in not a linear activity. It is a two-way street that occurs over time and is subject to alteration due to the ever-changing nature of human emotions. It requires willing participation from the other. Empathy also requires the ability to formulate an idea of the nature of the other's thoughts and feelings as well as to be in emotional harmony with the other. Empathy can occur when one can imagine how the other may think or feel based on one's own experiences and with the focused effort to embrace the perspectives of the other. Empathy works when both parties participate.
Ratcliffe (2014) proposes that empathy, the ability to perceive the meaning of and share the feelings of another, is not the result of merely mimicking or fantasizing about another's affective state. Copying another's affective state or creating notions in the mind about another's affective state is not empathy. He draws his conclusions as a result of his investigations into the structure of empathy in the context of depression. Ratcliffe (2014) describes depression as an experience that renders the sufferer feeling as though they are "in a different world or utterly alien place, thus conveying the all-enveloping nature of the experiential disturbance, along with a sense of isolation from others" (p. 272). Hence, when one is depressed, they are unable to participate in what Ratcliffe (2014) defines as a "shared world" where one's thoughts and feelings can be shared with others (p. 272). Depressed people are alienated from others because they are unable to interpersonally connect with others, which is a necessary criterion for empathy. Empathy works when a person is receptive to being understood and the empathizer is committed to and interested in understanding the person.
Empathy requires a significant level of trust, is multilayered, complicated, and encompasses a wide range of feelings and emotions. Empathy requires commitment. In order to exemplify empathy, the ability to listen with sincere interest and total acceptance is required. The interest and curiosity displayed by the listener through the act of listening, conveys a sense of worth and value to the patient by allowing the patient to become more self-accepting, which could be argued as an important goal of empathy. The challenge for African American psychotherapists is to be able to demonstrate empathy despite the expressed racial bias by White patients in the therapeutic dyad.
References
Fromm, E. (1994). The Art of Listening. The Continuum Publishing Company. New York.
Discusses the author's manner in which he contended with the psychological suffering of his patients.
Hollon, D. (2008). Being There: On The Imaginative Aspects of Understanding Others and Being Understood. Ethos 36 (4), 475-489.
Discusses the ways in which people encourage or discourage understanding of themselves over time.
Ratcliffe, M. (2014). The Phenomenology of Depression and the Nature of Empathy. Medicine, health Care and Philosophy, 17 (2), 269-280.
This paper attempts to clarify the nature of empathy in the context of depression.
Rogers, C. (1961). On Becoming a Person. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston.
Discusses the author's understanding of the value of a trusting, open, a honest relationship where the patient received the full and undivided attention of the therapist to promote healing.
Throop, C. J. (2010). Latitudes of Loss: On the Vicissitudes of Empathy. American Ethnologist, 37 (4), 475-489.
Discusses how empathy is a complicated process that traverses the regular changes of human emotion between people.
Web-based References
louagosta.com
Lou Agosta's blog on empathy.