The Relational Value of Empathy

ABSTRACT

Philosophers and scholars from other disciplines have long discussed the role of empathy in our moral lives. The distinct relational value of empathy, however, has been largely overlooked. This article aims to specify empathy’s distinct relational value: Empathy is both intrinsically and extrinsically valuable in virtue of the pleasant experiences we share with others, the harmony and meaning that empathy provides, the recognition, self-esteem, and self-trust it enhances, as well as trust in others, attachment, and affection it fosters. Once we better understand in what ways empathy is a uniquely relational phenomenon, we can unveil its relevance to morality, which avoids the strictures of both partiality and impartiality. On the one hand, it is the relational value of empathy that grounds defeasible reasons to empathize insofar as empathy is morally called for by a particular relationship (or if we have defeasible reasons to establish a relationship by empathy). On the other hand, it is precisely empathy’s relational value that allows us to show that it can be kept within bounds. To realize empathy’s relational value, we are not constantly required to empathize. Instead, once we properly appreciate empathy’s distinct relational value, we can show that this leaves us room to respond to impartialist concerns.     

人际吸引机制探索:主我分享中情绪的作用

研究以计算机仿真交流平台为工具,采用模拟情景方法,探讨了人际互动中相似性对人际吸引的影响和人际吸引机制。采用2×2组间设计,共32名被试。结果显示:(1)主我分享是态度相似的重要组成部分;(2)在人际交流与互动中,主我分享是影响人际吸引的重要因素;(3)情绪是主我分享影响人际吸引的中介变量,起部分中介作用;(4)人际互动情境模拟是研究人际交往的一种有效途径。     

Sensitivity of the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule IV in Detecting Potentially Traumatic Childhood Maltreatment

This study examined the sensitivity of the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule IV (ADIS-IV) in detecting potentially traumatic childhood abuse experiences in a sample of 50 consecutive adult anxiety disorder patients. Of 13 patients who reported traumatic childhood maltreatment experiences using a behaviorally specific abuse history questionnaire, seven failed to report these experiences during the ADIS-IV interview (a sensitivity of 46%). Findings suggest that the two omnibus gating questions on the ADIS-IV may be insufficient in capturing exposure to certain traumatic events, as stipulated by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual diagnostic criteria for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This potential for under identification of trauma history suggests that caution is warranted regarding the use of the ADIS-IV to screen for self-reported trauma exposure in adult outpatients. Alternatives, including the use of PTSD-specific interviews and supplemental trauma event checklists, are discussed.     

An initial exploration of the therapeutic impact of music on genocide orphans in Rwanda

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide murdered over a million and brought on incalculable distress to survivors. An non-governmental organisation, Network for Africa, has a music programme to rehabilitate orphans in Kigali, now entering adulthood. This naturalistic study investigated whether music had transformational meaning for participants. Thirteen participants, (F = 7; M = 6) formed two brief focus groups to explore how music making changes them. Responses were audio recorded, analysed qualitatively by an iterative process to derive initial and then overarching themes. Three major themes emerged: music changes my past, music gives me a safe place in the present including fellowship and prayer and music provides me with personal resource to face an uncertain future. The themes resonate with cognitive therapy elements in managing post-traumatic problems, including grounding and processing the past. Implications of music making for traumatised communities are explored and recommendations made to identify the specific role of music making in a post-conflict, African population.     

Using Creative Techniques With Children Who Have Experienced Trauma

Verbal and emotional forms of expression can be difficult for young children who have experienced trauma. Creative methods and approaches such as puppets, sandtray, letter writing, and art are therapeutic mediums that provide an outlet for a young client’s story of trauma to be told. Children can use puppets to depersonalize and share feelings with a counselor that would provide insight into their coping strategies. Similarly, sandtray is another nonverbal approach that gives children the opportunity to externalize their feelings safely and can be easily used with extroverted and introverted clients. Letter writing and art can empower children and give them hope for the future. In summary, creative techniques can allow counselors to help explore stories of trauma with young clients.     

人际敏感:从社会认知到心理危险因素

作为一种社会认知能力,人际敏感受到了研究者的广泛关注。近年来,研究者将这种以不断担心负面的社会评价为特征,对他人评价保持警觉与敏感,并采取防御性行为(如服从或抑制行为)以避免负面社会评价的倾向作为个体一种整合的人格特征。研究发现人际敏感是传染性疾病的心理危险因素,并可能会增加心血管疾病的风险。未来研究应发展信效度良好的测量工具,进一步地整合相关模型,明确人际敏感影响健康的内部机制,为疾病的预防与心理干预提供指导。     

‘The child's past in the adult's present’: The trauma of the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944)

This study deals with the individual and collective memory of Leningrad Siege survivors who experienced mass and prolonged wartime trauma during childhood (1941–44). While much has been published about the Siege, there has to date been no investigation by psychologists into the effects of extreme deprivation on Siege victims apart from one pilot study (Gulina et al., 2005). This study is still underway. Interviews with 80 participants (68 female and 12 male) are analysed and discussed here. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and content analysis are utilized. Unpublished archival writings by children caught in the Siege have been analysed. The principal method of interpretation is based on a psychoanalytic understanding of child development, mourning and the metabolizing of traumatic experience. The subjective meaning of the Siege experience to individual children is considered     

On excess,trauma and helplessness: Repetitions and transformations

Freud's work establishes a link between an excessive amount of excitation, the infant's experience of helplessness, and trauma. The idea of excess emphasises a quantitative element, not reducible to the field of representation. In this paper I explore the notions of excess and closure in relation to two clinical examples. A patient who lived through experiences of excess and flooding is contrasted with another patient whose experience of excess is expressed through withdrawal. The complex process of elaboration and working through in their analyses takes place by bringing together affect, representation, sensorial and somatic experiences, dreams, associations and enactments as they are gathered and given meaning après coup through analytic work. Two concepts were central to the understanding of what took place in the analyses: excorporation and figurability. The paper emphasizes the place of temporality in creating a triadic space in an analysis as it relates the here and now with the there and then in the work of après‐coup. The paper also traces the roots of this modern approach that relates the analyst's work of regression, time, and the creation of a triadic space to Freud's metapsychology.     

The countertransference: When painful traumatic traces sustain the countertransference and reveal themselves to the psychoanalyst … 14 years later!

Although she experienced, as did the many psychoanalysts before her, the countertransferential dynamics of disgust towards a patient presenting great deficiency in terms of mentalization capacity, the author strives to understand what urged her to tolerate the patient, to invest in her and lead her to develop a capacity for internalization, after 6 years of analytic work filled with transgressive‐transferential acting‐out. Fourteen years later, she becomes aware of the way in which the revival of some grief related to traumatic traces in her own lived experience, sustained, without her knowledge, a saviour/countertransference, creating a specific transferential‐countertransferential spiral which rescued a situation whose advent could have been compromised. This could happen thanks to what she refers to as the unique inter‐relation between her and this particular patient.