Empathy

Discussion

While the ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process that only fully develops with time, as later on in life, or with considerable training, or investigation, or imagination, the roots of such ability are probably innate to the empathizer's life, training, or investigation.

Human capacity to recognize the emotions of another is related to one's imitative capacities, and seems to be grounded in one's innate capacity to associate the bodily movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive feelings of one's corresponding movements or expressions. See Organic Basis below.

Humans also seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice, and body language of another and one's inner feeling. Hence, by looking at the facial expressions or bodily movements of another, or by hearing another's tone of voice, one may be able to get an immediate sense of how another seems to feel on the inside. One experiences this as anything in a range, from understanding, to directly experiencing, or to feeling another's emotion (say, sadness or anger), rather than just noting the behavioral symptoms of another's emotion. But clinicians must take care not to over-invest their own emotions at the risk of draining away their own resourcefulness; thus awareness of one's own limitations is prudent in a clinical situation, as in caregiving.

More fully developed empathy requires more than simply recognizing another's emotional state. Since emotions are typically directed towards objects or states of affairs (either real or imaginary), the empathiser first requires some idea of what that object might be.

Next, the empathiser must determine how the emotional feeling will significantly affect the way in which he perceives the other person. The empathizer needs to determine the aspects of the person upon which to focus.

Hence he must not only recognize the person toward which the other is directed, but also then recognize the bodily feeling, and then add these components together. The empathiser needs next to find the way into the loop where perception of the other person generates feeling. That feeling affects the perception of the other person. This process occurs before taking in account the character of the other person as well as their wider non-psychological context (such as being short or being a lawyer).

Another way of looking at this is that empathy involves an acknowledgement in some fashion of the intentions and possibilites of the other and that this recognition is tolerable to the other. Empathy involves an understanding of intentionality.

Methods for simulating empathy

When seeking to communicate with another, it may be helpful to demonstrate empathy with the other, to open-up the channel of communication with the other. In this case two methods of simulating empathy are possible:
a) Either simulate the pretend beliefs, desires, character traits and context of the other and see what emotional feelings this leads to;
b) Or simulate the emotional feeling directly perceived and then look around for a suitable reason for this to fit. Either way, full empathetic engagement is supposed to help to understand and anticipate the behavior of the other.

Empathy may be painful to oneself: seeing the pain of others, especially as broadcasted by mass media, can cause one temporary or permanent clinical depression; a phenomenon which is sometimes called weltschmerz. Yet, despite potentially painful instances, empathy is essential for humanity. Without a basic emotional understanding of others there is no basis for relationship, a driving force humanity seeks to fulfill, therefore a tension struggle lies in the dilemma to protect oneself from the pain of empathy or seek to relate to other humans despite the potential risk of injury.

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