In 1993, I was appointed Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter. After settling in, I started to wonder what a suitable initial research project would be. Someone alerted me to some funds made available by the University for small projects – if I remember corretly, the amount was less that £30 000. Apparently, the grant was to be unbeaurocratic and, as I was newly appointed and everyone was wondering what I might get up to, I decided to go for it.
I sat down and recycled an idea that I had long wanted to test by never quite has the time to realize: a simple clinical trial where patients suffering from a common, benign condition [I think I chose insomnia] would be randomized into two groups. Both groups would be treated with a mild sleeping aid [I think I chose valarian]. The only difference between the two groups was that
- the experimental group would get an empathetic consultation, while
- the control group would get a normal one.
Thus the aim of the trial was to see whether empathy would impact on the outcome. My plan was that the prescribing clinician would be trained such that he/she could behave either normally or empathetically at will.
After I had submitted the proposal it was ‘peer reviewed’ by University staff. As it happened, my reviewer was John Tooke – he later became professor and medical director of the medical school at Exeter and later again moved to London and became the ‘Head of the School of Life & Medical Sciences’ at UCL but, at the time, he was just a doctor in the local hospital (if you are interested, there is more about Tooke in my memoir). Tooke’s assessment of my proposal was, to put it mildly, not positive and, of course, I never did get the funding. His critique explained that in the English language we call it ‘sympathy’ and not ’empathy’.
So, the study outlined above never got done, and every time I hear the word ’empathy’, I am reminded of this little anecdote. Like, for instance, a few days ago when I read that Elon Musk in his infinite wisdom had pronounced that: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy”
I have to admit: this thought scares me!
The question I ask myself is this: to what extent does a neglect of emapthy contribute to the professional success of some people?
In any case, I am jolly glad that in the English language does have a word ’empathy’. I am even more profoundly glad that many people I know do have empathy. And I agree with Hannah Arendt who once wrote that “The death of human emapthy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism”
PS
sympathy = (an expression of) understanding and care for someone else’s suffering
8 Responses to Empathy: a little anecdote + some serious thought and worries
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
That’s an excellent anecdote, the reviewer correctly avoided sympathy, but he failed to empathise with someone’s second language – he should have noticed that and made a little reviewing of self.
oh dear!
you haven’t even understood the anecdote?
When did Truther Bob ever understand anything? He is proud of his ignorance and narrow-mindedness. He shows this attitude with each of his comments.
When studying the Russian artist Naum Gabo, many years ago, I dug deep into “Einfuehlung”, translated by Violet Paget into English as empathy, thereby coining the English word. So I found your anecdote fascinating. The distinction between empahy and sympathy shall be clear to anyone who bothers to attend to it, and the significance of Einfuehlung in the study of visual arts, has yet a long way to go. (pace Theodor Lipps, Heinrich Woelfflin et al.)
As to the relevance of the issue to current events, I utterly agree that the psychopathy or otherwise of Trump, Musk, Putin et al., has to be kept in mind. (pace Bandy X. Lee, and many others.)
Empathy is also essential to survival: “[know yourself, survive every other battle, know your enemy, survive 100 battles.]” as the fella said, and that entails keeping a cool mind: being friendly “[keep your friends close, but your enemies closer]” keeps their flow of information coming.
The alternative is not good.
overflowing with BS and platitudes again, OB?
Evidence-based medicine works, but if patients do not encounter empathy (or at least sympathy) in the health care system, they will not feel respected, taken seriously or treated well. As a consequence (some) may then seek esoteric healers – who listen to them and do not treat them as a machine that needs mechanical fixing but no further attention, or as something that can/should be processed quickly by ticking off a guideline’s checklist, as a time planning problem that can be scheduled at will and then still be left waiting, etc. A quick feedback, a short explanation, an acknowledgement of a question, a sincere apology, etc. can go a long way…
for me, emapthy and EBM are not mutually exclusive – hence the study that I had in mind [but never materialized]