Author Archives
Dedicated and committed that empathy becomes less of a rumor and more of an expanded reality in the community...
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Review: The Soul of Care by Arthur Kleinman
![The Soul of Care by Arthur Kleinman [cover art]](https://empathylessons.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/coverartthesoulofcare.jpg?w=105&h=85&crop=1)
When I say, reading Arthur Kleinman’s books changes one’s listening, I do not mean changes one’s listening the way reading Lacan or being hit on the head with a rolled up newspaper changes one’s listening. What I mean is, reading Kleinman… Read More ›
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Conversion Disorder: The Human Body is the Best Picture of the Soul
Jamieson Webster writes like a combination of an Exocet missile and a feline feather tease. Webster has previously published on The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (2012) and with Simon Critchley on Hamlet (Stay Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (2014)). Her latest… Read More ›
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A Message of Hope and Hard Work: The Brain that Changes Itself
I have been catching up on my reading. Norman Doidge’s book, The Brain that Changes Itself (Penguin, 427pp. ($18)), was published in 2007, now some twelve years ago. This publication occurred towards the beginning of the era of neuro-hype that now… Read More ›
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Review: Einfühlung is now an English word: Susan Lanzoni’s Empathy: A History connects the dots between the many meanings of empathy
Short review: two thumbs up. Superb. Definitive. Well written and engaging. Innovative and even ground-breaking. Connects the dots between the different aspects and dimensions of empathy. Sets a new standard in empathy studies. The longer – much longer – review… Read More ›
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Review: “No Visible Bruises” Refers to Strangulation
The title of Rachel Louise Snyder’s eye-opening, powerful, page-turner of a book, No Visible Bruises, refers to strangulation [No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019: 309 pp, $28(US)]. Some… Read More ›
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Review: Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness by Anne Harrington
In spite of the many patients who have been helped to lead emotionally stable, more productive lives thanks to two generations of psychopharmacological medicines, psychiatry is facing an ongoing challenge of its foundation and legitimacy. That is the take-away in… Read More ›
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Review: Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) – and Empathy
The reader in Chicago may say that’s fine, but what has it got to do with the situation here in the USA? We do not have child soldiers or wide spread traumatized populations. Think again. Gangs are recruiting children of tender age not only as messengers but also as triggermen, because they know youngsters will face a different criminal justice system and process, generally more lenient, than adults.
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Narrative versus Neuroscientism
Review: Alex Rosenberg’s How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories(The MIT Press, 289 pp., $27.95US). Henry Ford said: “History is bunk.” The privileged, the victors, those with an ax to grind, and those with the… Read More ›
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Three books on empathy: The good, the bad, and the ugly
The first empathy book reviewed here is very good indeed. William Miller’s Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding (Wipf and Stock, 114pp, ($18US)) is a short book. Admirably concise. My short review is that, as I am author of… Read More ›
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A Critical Review of a Philosophy of Empathy
You don’t need a philosopher to tell you what empathy is; you need a philosopher to help you distinguish the hype and the over-intellectualization from a rigorous and critical empathy. Every parent, teacher, health care worker, business person with customers,… Read More ›
Empathy Lessons 