empathic receptivity

Empathy Curriculum: Overview of the Empathy Lessons Training Seminar (ELTS): Edwin Rutsch interviews Lou Agosta about the ELTS and Lou’s experiences around empathy

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To listen to Edwin’s Rutsch’s interview and conversation with Lou Agosta on Sept 1, 2026. Play interview by clicking here: Edwin Rutsch Interviews Lou Agosta [ https://youtu.be/4jQe9ccVfM8?si=lwVibcPIN8D67v3w%5D The following summary was generated by AI by Edwin Rutsch (and Lou). Edwin… Read More ›

Empathy Can't Be Automated - poster ad (c) Adler University

Automating Empathy – Issues and Answers

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I saw an advertisement today: “Empathy can’t be automated” 

Made me think: What is the evidence pro and con?

The obvious question is “Well, can you?”

The debate is joined. This turns out to be a trick question. The intuition on my part is that one cannot automate empathy, but perhaps one can simulate it, and then the simulation turns out to be something quite like the “automating empathy” of the title.

Printmaker: Cornelis Cortnaar ontwerp van: Titiaan (vermeld op object), verlener van privilege: onbekend (vermeld op object) Plaats vervaardiging: Rome Datering: 1566

A concise talk on trauma and radical empathy

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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. 

Dr. Ornstein in 2018, speaking to high school students in Massachusetts.Credit...Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images

Noted in passing: Anna Ornstein (1927-2025)

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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.

The empathic dozen: Top 12 empathy lessons

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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.

Empathy: A Lazy Person's Guide Cover Art by Alex Zonis, illustrator/artist

Empathy: A Lazy Person’s Guide is now an ebook and live!

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Empathy training is all about practicing balance: You have to strive in a process of trial and error and try again to find the right balance. So “lazy person’s guide” is really trying to say “laid back person’s guide.” The “laziness” is not lack of energy, but well-regulated, focused energy, applied in balanced doses. The risk is that some people – and you know who you are – will actually get stressed out trying to be lazy. Cut that out! Just let it be! Drive out hostility and aggression, and empathy naturally and spontaneously comes forth!