Author Archives

Dedicated and committed that empathy becomes less of a rumor and more of an expanded reality in the community...

• Historical Empathy and Strict Constructionism: About Guns

  By Lou Agosta on November 29, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  When the framers of the US Constitution wrote the Second Amendment, the standard weapon was a single shot musket, powder and ball. This time out I am a strict constructionist.

• A Rumor of Empathy in the Philosophy of Kant

  By Lou Agosta on October 25, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  Kant famously asserted he was awakened from his “dogmatic slumbers” by studying Hume. This occurred not only in Kant’s theory of knowledge, but [arguably] also in taste, aesthetics, and the communicability of feelings. The “communicability of feelings” (1790/93a: 174; §40… Read More ›

• Review: Illusions of a Future by Kate Schechter

  By Lou Agosta on September 19, 2015

  

  The picture is of Socrates drinking the hemlock by the celebrated French painter, Jacques-Louis David. After reading Kate Schechter’s Illusions of a Future (2014) one has to wonder if psychoanalytic politics have brought the practice of psychoanalysis to a similar result…. Read More ›

• Plato Not Prozac!

  By Lou Agosta on September 12, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  The neurochemical reshaping of personality has had many unanticipated consequences. I acknowledge that the debate is not ended by the Chapter in my A Rumor of Empathy on “Plato Not Prozac,” the name of which is hereby acknowledged to be from… Read More ›

• One Person’s Empathy is Another’s Counter-Transference

  By Lou Agosta on August 30, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  One person’s empathy is another’s countertransference. I will not confess my weaknesses, since they will be obvious to the reader in any case. The short – very short – definition of “countertransference” is one’s reaction and response to the other… Read More ›

• 4 Ways Empathy Misfires, Breaks Down, Goes Astray – Don’t Let This Happen to You!

  By Lou Agosta on August 22, 2015

  

  Four dimensions of empathy exist – each one has a way of misfiring, breaking down or going astray. The advantage of this definition of empathy is that it shows one where things go “off the rails”. If one knows where and how… Read More ›

• 9 Steps to Recovery From Domestic Violence (DV) – One Picture

  By Lou Agosta on August 15, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  If the survivor can feel safe enough to express what happened into an empathic receptivity in the context of a trusting environment that does not retraumatize by skepticism and cross-examination, then the abuse, the boundary violations, and the perpetrations, begin… Read More ›

• Resistance to Empathy – the Presentation – at the Intl’ Psychoanalytic Assoc., Boston, USA

  By Lou Agosta on July 18, 2015

  

  Resistance to empathy takes many forms. Resistance to empathy includes those factors coming from the therapist, those from the patient, including those emerging in the interaction, and those from the culture at large. Although “the culture” is distinct from “the system delivering… Read More ›

• Empathy is like oxygen for the soul: So if you are experiencing a shortness of breath…

  By Lou Agosta on June 29, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  Empathy is like oxygen for the soul (according to a famous statement by Heinz Kohut). So if you are experiencing a shortness of breath in your relationships, career, or commitments, maybe you need expanded empathy. Join me [Lou] for an “on… Read More ›

• 10 Top Tips and Techniques for Expanding Empathy

  By Lou Agosta on June 13, 2015

  

  Join me [Lou] for an on the air conversation on Empathy Radio focusing on top tips and techniques for expanding ones empathy. Click here to play the show: 10 Top Tips and Techniques for Expanding Empathy. The main tip and… Read More ›