The trend of bringing large language models to empathy and empathic relatedness is a game changer. The question is not whether the generative AI can be empathic, but the extent to which the designers are able to distinguish responsiveness from “stroking one’s ego,” sycophancy (servile flattery), and the extent to which prospective clients decide to engage (both open questions at this date (Q1 2026)).
Radical empathy is attained when standard empathy honors the commitment to empathize in the face of empathic distress – the reaction on the part of audiences to circumstances in which tragic protagonists become entangled.This is empathy the “hard way,” and it is rare. However, no other way exists of attaining radical empathy than through empathy pure-and-simple….
Caruth (1996) concisely defines trauma in terms of an experience that is registered but not experienced, a truth or reality that is not available to the survivor as a standard experience. The person (for example) was factually, objectively present when the head on collision occurred, but, even if the person has memories, and would acknowledge the event, paradoxically, the person does not presently experience it as something the person experienced in a way that a person standardly experienced the past event. The survivor experiences dissociated, repetitive nightmares, flashbacks, and depersonalization.
To enhance the parents’ therapeutic potentials does not mean to give recommendations as to how to interrupt or actively discourage the child’s disturbing behavior. Particularly destructive are recommendations which ask for changed parental behavior without an appreciation for the parents’ difficulty to comply; such recommendations are “grafted” onto the parents’ pathology.
Drive out aggression, hostility, bullying, prejudice of all kinds, dignity violations, hypocrisy, making excuses, finger pointing, cynicism, resignation, bad language, manipulation, injuries to self-esteem, competing to be the biggest victim, and politics in the pejorative sense of the term, and empathy naturally comes forth.
This episode on Radical Empathy – what it is and why it is important – is the first in a series inquiring into radical empathy, what it is or whether it is just a rumor; how radical empathy differs from standard empathy; how radical empathy and everyday, standard empathy overlap and the dynamics of their interactions; how radical empathy makes a difference in situations when standard empathy breaks down and fails; and how the listener can expand his or her empathic skills, getting power over empathy and apply empathy in one’s lie, relationships, career, family, in the individual and in community.
That little voice inside that is quietly telling you “You do not make a difference” is not your friend. It must be the first target of transformation – High probability that voice is a hostile introject based on whatever it is that you had to survive
Whereas some leaders try to balance power with compassion, the current leadership often portrays empathy as a flaw. Strength, in his view, is about domination—whether over political rivals, foreign adversaries, or marginalized groups.
Radical empathy is the number one trend. The world is a more dangerous, broken place than it was a year ago. The challenge to empathy is that the dangers and breakdowns in the world have expanded dramatically over the long past year such. Standard empathy is no longer sufficient. Radical empathy is required.
“Beloved” is the name of a person. Toni Morrison builds on the true story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved person, who escaped with her two children even while pregnant with a third, succeeding in reaching freedom across the Ohio River in 1854. However, shortly thereafter, slave catchers (“bounty hunters”) arrived with the local sheriff under the so-called fugitive slave act to return Margaret and her children to slavery. Rather than submit to re-enslavement, Margaret tried to kill the children, also planning then to kill herself. She succeeded in killing one, before being overpowered. The dead returns as a ghost – Beloved.
Empathy Lessons 