Empathy Lessons

Recent Posts - page 7

• Resistance to Empathy (Part 1): Organizational Resistance to Empathy and How to Overcome It

  By Lou Agosta on June 19, 2021

  

  that make organizations successful are not always the qualities that enhance their empathy. Hear me say it, and not for the last time: the things that make us good at business, including the corporate transformation of American medicine and education, do not always expand our empathy. What to do about it? The battle is joined. The recommendation? Let your customers, constituents, or stake-holders train you in empathy: Realize that if you do not respond empathically, the customers are just going to go quietly to the competitor that does. Empathy is good for business. If the customer has a complaint that he is having trouble expressing, then use one’s listening skills to get to the bottom of things.

• The Natural Empath Encounters the Good Samaritan

  By Lou Agosta on June 6, 2021

  

  Cross the street away from the neighbor to “down regulate” your empathy, and experience less empathic distress; and cross the street towards your neighbor to expand your empathy in the direction of creating an inclusive community of persons, who recognize the value of cooperation. 

• Review: Galileo’s Middle Finger by Alice Dreger – Speaking Truth to Power – and Power Talks Back

  By Lou Agosta on May 28, 2021

  

  A scientist has not been burned at the stake in over 350 years – and even then it was Giordano Bruno, not Galileo. Find out how Professor Alice Dreger (PhD) become an advocate for survivors of intersex sexual reassignment surgery and she becomes a strong candidate to be burned in effigy by those for whom she was advocating.

• Perform a Readiness Assessment: A Rigorous and Critical Empathy

  By Lou Agosta on May 14, 2021

  

  Empathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time for it. Empathy is never needed more than when it seems the budget does not allow for it. Empathy is never needed more than when the cynicism and resignation about life, whether in the family or the corporate jungle, are so thick you can’t catch your breath.

• The Case of Dr Know-It-All: Empathy gives us our humanity

  By Lou Agosta on April 10, 2021

  

  One does not need a philosopher to tell one what empathy is. What then does one need? How about a folktale, a fairy tale, a Märchen? Rather than start with a definition of empathy, my proposal is to start by telling a couple of stories, in which empathy (and its breakdown) plays a crucial role. Both stories are anonymous folktales from the collection edited by the Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The distilled wisdom of the ages accumulated in traditional anonymous narratives will do nicely. Now available to listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6pCIwUknKqxZwIqau0m1YW

• Review: Politics of Empathy by Anthony Clohesy

  By Lou Agosta on March 27, 2021

  

  Clohesy’s big idea is that empathy is about identity and similarity, but it is just as fundamentally about differences. Key term: empathy of differences. This provides a powerful angle on that vexing issue of empathy and ethics, which has the frustrating aspect of being a chicken and egg dilemma.

• Review: A Silvan Tomkins Handbook: Foundations for Affect Theory by Adam J. Frank and Elizabeth A. Wilson

  By Lou Agosta on March 13, 2021

  

  Like Mount Everest, Tomkins’ work is on the border of several gigantic kingdoms, extending from philosophy to psychology, neurology to evolutionary psychology, data rich empirical research to high speculation, phenomenology to an early version of critical theory, behaviorism to personality theory and psychoanalysis.

• Review: Empathy and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past by Thomas A. Kohut

  By Lou Agosta on February 27, 2021

  

  Kohut’s definition of empathy is a rigorous and critical one. Empathy is a mode of observation that gives one access to the thoughts and feelings of other human beings as subjects. Key term: subjectivity. Empathy is the foundation of intersubjectivity and that intersubjectivity has a temporal horizon extending from the past into the future.

• The Limits of Empathy in Politics

  By Lou Agosta on January 31, 2021

  Even in politics empathy is always empathy. However, politics brings along a whole new set of questions, issues, and challenges by with which empathy is confronted and to which empathy gets applied.

• Empathy, Brain Science, Stress Reduction – the Video!

  By Lou Agosta on January 16, 2021

  

  This is your mind on neuroscience – mirror neurons: do they exist, and if not, what about it?
  Sperry on the split brain: the information is in the system: how to get at it
  The neuroscience of trauma – and how empathy gives us access to it
  MRI research: as when Galileo looked through the telescope, a whole new world opens

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