Empathy Lessons

Recent Posts - page 6

• Empathy and the Novel by Suzanne Keen (Reviewed)

  By Lou Agosta on November 30, 2021

  

  A significant aspect of the interest in relating empathy and the reading of fiction is to make the world a better place. Read some quality fiction; expand one’s empathy; and take action to improve the world. Wouldn’t it be nice? 

• Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 3): Let’s do the numbers

  By Lou Agosta on November 14, 2021

  

  Follow the money – by all means – but don’t follow it off a cliff. Take a walk in the shoes of the other person in order to sell them another pair!?

• Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 2): “CEO” now means “Chief Empathy Officer”

  By Lou Agosta on November 4, 2021

  

  Empathy is one of those things that are hard to delegate. This role shows up like another job responsibility with which the CEO of the organization is tasked—along with everything else that she already has to do. As if she did not already have enough alligators snapping at various parts of her anatomy, one has to be nice about it, too? But of course empathy is not niceness, though it is not about being un-nice. It is about knowing what others are experiencing, because one has a vicarious experience and then processing that further to expand boundaries and exercise leadership. 

• Empathy: Capitalist Tool (Part 1): The Empathy Deficit in Business is Getting Attention

  By Lou Agosta on October 23, 2021

  

  Testing a person’s decisions and preferences using probabilities, bets, and lotteries is an engaging exercise, and nothing is wrong in doing so. However, unless one also adds empathy to the mixture of economics and logic one misses something essential—the person!

• Empathy and Literature: Grand Rounds Talk (rebroadcast): Oct 13, 2016

  By Lou Agosta on October 17, 2021

  

  The four phases of empathy – receptivity, understanding, interpretation, and responsiveness- are exemplified in literature in rebroadcast of this Grand Rounds talk from Rush Medical in Oct 2016…

• Empathy versus bullying: Part 3: Recommendations for Students, Parents, Educators

  By Lou Agosta on September 28, 2021

  

  First, these recommendations are about getting back your power—or at least some of your power—in the face of bullying. Sometimes that looks like making a tactical retreat, much as one might dislike doing so, in order to reestablish boundaries and integrity. The idea is to de-escalate the potential confrontation. What de-escalation looks like is different according to the situation. 

• Empathy versus bullying: online bullying and what to do about it

  By Lou Agosta on September 26, 2021

  

  The paradox is the anti-social nature of social networking. The computer screen isolates the person even as the person is trying to connect. The contrary is also the case. The screen connects the person when the person wants to be alone, rudely announcing an incoming message by beeping, demanding one’s attention. Sometimes the screen brings out the anti-social tendencies instead of the pro-social ones, enabling one to be inauthentic, hiding behind a false self.

• Empathy versus bullying: The biggest bully in my life

  By Lou Agosta on September 7, 2021

  

  Since the bullying is a boundary violation, the way to reestablish empathy and order (where “order” means common courtesy) is to reestablish the boundary between persons.

• Empathy as presence – online and in shared physical space

  By Lou Agosta on August 2, 2021

  

  The ontological definition of empathy as “being in the presence of another human being without anything else added” – anything else such as judgment, evaluation, memory, desire, hostility, and the many factors that make us unavailable to be in relationship. Though Gillian Isaacs Russell uses the word “empathy” in a specific psychological sense, I would argue that her work on “presence” is consistent with and contributes to an enlarged sense of empathic relatedness that builds community.   

• Reclaiming Empathy in Online Therapy: An Imaginary Conversation with Sherry Turkle

  By Lou Agosta on June 28, 2021

  

  Professor Turkle, Sherry, launches a Jeremiad – remember the Prophet Jeremiah? – against buzzing, beeping, interrupting devices, which give us acquired attention deficit, and carries her concerns in the direction of online therapy. If empathy is being copresent with another person, where is the empathy online? Find out in the engaging conversation between Lou and Arnon about Sherry’s penetrating and incisive work!

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