Empathic development during adolescence: religiosity,the missing link?

While theories regarding the development of empathy hypothesise increased empathy scores during adolescence, data among adolescent samples tend not to find such a relationship. The present paper proposes religiosity as the missing link to account for this discrepancy between theory and findings, on the theory that decreasing religiosity during adolescence is likely to depress empathy scores at precisely the same time as increasing cognitive skills are likely to enhance empathy development. Data from 569 school children, aged 11–17 years, who completed both the Junior I₆ Empathy Scale and the Attitude towards Religion Scale ASC4B, demonstrate that, while there is no direct correlation in the sample between age and empathy, there is a significant positive correlation between age and empathy after controlling for differences in levels of religiosity.     

How Loving are You Willing to Be? Empathic Interpretations of Fallibility,Capability, and Luck in Psychotherapy

This article addresses possibilities for more empathic interpretations in the clinical situation. Using both clinical case material and mythical allegories, the author, a psychotherapist and philosopher, considers the interrelated themes of human capability, fallibility, luck, and compassion within the context of clinical circumstances, especially in relation to intractable compulsive disorders. While addressing the implications of deterministic and indeterministic assumptions regarding human nature, the author attempts to show how human capability is subject to fallibility and how both are dependent on the workings of luck. Clinical material is then used to elucidate and illustrate more empathic ways of relating both to patients in particular and our fellow human beings in general. A new interpretive framework is also introduced to facilitate and to suggest ways to more compassionately understand, interpret, and respond to patients' own struggles for well being.     

Empathic forecasting: How do we predict other people's feelings?

When making affective forecasts, people commit the impact bias. They overestimate the impact an emotional event has on their affective experience. In three studies we show that people also commit the impact bias when making empathic forecasts, affective forecasts for someone else. They overestimate the impact an emotional event has on someone else's affective experience (Study 1), they do so for friends and strangers (Study 2), and they do so when other sources of information are available (Study 3). Empathic forecasting accuracy, the correlation between one person's empathic forecast and another person's actual affective experience, was lower than between-person forecasting correspondence, the correlation between one person's empathic forecast and another person's affective forecast. Empathic forecasts do not capture other people's actual experience very well but are similar to what other people forecast for themselves. This may enhance understanding between people.     

Empathic accuracy in coach–athlete dyads who participate in team and individual sports

ObjectiveThe purpose of the present study was to investigate the empathic accuracy of coach–athlete dyads participating in team and individual sports.MethodAn adaptation of Ickes's [2001. Measuring empathic accuracy. In J. A. Hall & F. J. Bernieri (Eds.), Interpersonal sensitivity (pp. 219–242). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates] unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm was used to assess the empathic accuracy of 40 coach–athlete dyads. Accordingly, each dyad was filmed during a training session. The dyad members viewed selected video footage that displayed discrete interactions that had naturally occurred during that session. Dyad members reported what they remembered thinking/feeling while making inferences about what their partner's thought/felt at each point. Empathic accuracy was estimated by comparing self-reports and inferences.ResultsThe results indicted that accuracy for coaches in individual sports was higher than coaches in team sports. Shared cognitive focus also differed between team and individual sports, and fully mediated the effect of sport-type on coach empathic accuracy. Moreover, coaches whose training sessions were longer demonstrated increased empathic accuracy. No differences were found for athletes.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the dynamics of the interaction between a coach and an athlete play a key role in how accurately they perceive each other.     

Mothers’ Empathic Understanding of their Toddlers: Associations with Maternal Depression and Sensitivity

Mothers’ empathic understanding of their children’s motives, thoughts, and feelings is thought to guide parenting behaviors and shape the mother-child relationship. However, little is known about the relation between empathic understanding and parenting behaviors during developmental shifts that may be emotionally challenging for mothers, such as the transition from infancy to the toddler years, or how it may relate to maternal depressive symptoms. We assessed relations between maternal empathic understanding, depression, and sensitivity. We developed a coding system, the Empathic Understanding Assessment (EUA), to measure this construct in the mothers of 30-month old children. One hundred twenty eight mother-child pairs participated in a series of lab-based tasks designed to be challenging for the children. Mothers then watched these videotaped interactions and responded to questions regarding their children’s experiences. Interview content was coded using the EUA. Results indicated that mothers higher in empathic understanding and more intensely emotional were rated as more sensitive. Maternal depression was negatively related to empathic understanding. The importance of considering the role of maternal empathic understanding in parenting behavior is discussed, as are potential implications for child outcomes.     

Coming to Terms With Invisible Disability—Beyond Empathic Resonance: Commentary on Paper by Lauren Levine

For the clinician as for any parent, having a child with cognitive disabilities heightens one's sense of vulnerability and insufficiency. One is confronted with unbearably intractable limits, which generates doubt about one's therapeutic potential. The ability to empathize with a parent's distress is crucial, but only the starting point in treating a patient whose child is disabled. What may be most constructive is the dialectic between the analyst's relative detachment (involving compassion but also a willingness to dredge up disavowed negative feeling) and the parent's attached dismay. Lacanian and existentialist theories remind us that, whether normal or handicapped, we are all existentially in a state of lack. This perspective provides a useful touchstone for analyzing the experience of disability in one's own life and that of one's patients.

In further response to Lauren Levine's paper, it is argued that it is tricky to prove (beyond showing that a training analysis promotes maturation in the broadest sense) that a given aspect of an analyst's own personal analysis resulted in the capacity to heal a particular patient. The point can be made most persuasively when the actual analytic exchange, messy and circuitous as it may be, is offered in great detail.     

Sustained Empathic Focus and the Creation of a “We Space” Revisited in the Light of Recent Findings in Neurobiology

This article is an attempt to expand our understanding of the curative process with an emphasis on the group therapy setting. It presents a self psychological approach that underlines the importance of a “sustained empathic focus” on each patient’s subjective experience and the creation of what we have referred to as shared “vulnerable moments” and a “we-space.” The relationship of our approach to recent findings in the field of neurobiology is then considered.     

Who,What, When,Where, How,and Mostly Why?

SUMMARY

The death of a client by suicide was very emotionally destabilizing to this therapist. She worked hard to distance herself personally from the pain at first and at the same time she found herself overfocused on the “psychological autopsy.” She had difficulty accepting new clients and wanted to withdraw from a meaningful appointment to a state advisory committee. Only when she was able to identify with the client's pain and realize how that pain touched her own history of loss was she able to grieve productively. She realized that gender was relevant in her identification with the victim and in sorting out each of their histories of loss.     

Identität, Familie, Patienten, Olympier

The author deals with the tradition of mental patterns in psychoanalytic institutes shaping the character of training. He discusses several patterns which in his opinion have become dysfunctional and are already in change: the family model, the patient model, the conception of training analysts as Olympians, the psychoanalytic identity as the endpoint of training and the model of the closed society. He argues for further transformation of these institutionalized patterns in order to avoid stagnation and remain future oriented. For each pattern he proposes concrete measures, which can be helpful for change.     

学习科学,破除迷信,提高素质

二十年以前就有过一场争论,是关于"耳朵认字"的问题.当时一批科学家起来揭露它的虚伪性,但也有一批科学家却出来支持它,认为这是人体的特异功能.九十年代初,这种伪科学越演越烈,越说越神奇.这两年似乎不大听说了.但另一种歪门邪说却又泛滥起来,这就是法轮功.当然法轮功已成为残害人民、残害社会的邪教组织,与一般相信特异功能是两种不同性质的问题.但是究其思想基础却同出一源,即迷信二字.     

(Math, Science, ?)

In science as in mathematics, it is popular to know little and resent much about category theory. Less well known is how common it is to know little and like much about set theory. The set theory of almost all scientists, and even the average mathematician, is fundamentally different from the formal set theory that is contrasted against category theory. The latter two are often opposed by saying one emphasizes Substance, the other Form. However, in all known systems of mathematics throughout history, mathematicians have moved fluidly between ideas conceived of as thing-like, property-like, and process-like. On the other hand one way to advance science is to better distinguish between thing, property, and process. All this constitutes a distracting background for those interested in, or distressed by, the possible application of category theory to science, and to mathematics as well.     

附生性,因果性,还原性

一、引论在过去的 20多年里, 戴维森的反常一元论和附生性概念占据了心灵哲学讨论的中心领域。一方面, 戴维森的理论面临以金在权为代表的众多哲学家的尖锐批评; 另一方面, 大家似乎相信, 弄清楚附生性概念就意味着心物问题的解决。本文首先将论述戴维森的附生性概念及其非还原的物理主义学说, 然后将介绍金在权的批评意见, 随后将对戴维森的反常一元论作一个唯名论的诠释, 弄清戴维森的附生性概念到底是什么意思、它是一种什么样的共变关系, 以维护戴维森的反常一元论, 并抵御金在权的指控。最后还将论证, 附生性既不是一个因果关系, 也不…     

怒斥北约,保卫和平,普度众生

中华崛起外夷忧，使馆被轰蓄预谋。玩火自焚因嫉忌，惹来抗义震环球。遇难无辜魄未收，人神共怒泛洪流。严惩凶手循因果，不祭英魂誓不休。神州舜日固根基，团结精诚时世熙。北约当知停战火，炎黄亿万岂能欺。怒斥北约,保卫和平,普度众生@黄诚伦...