By Sumayyah Sheikh.
Social discrimination, poverty, climate change, war and famine are but a few of the injustices plaguing the modern world. In the wake of the 2019 UK general election and the ongoing Brexit saga, news headlines have called for a rekindling of kindness and empathy between leavers and remainers. More recently, we've seen an outpour of empathy for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle amongst the controversial "Megxit".
However, the word ‘empathy’ has a convoluted history and its meaning continues to be ambiguous and multifaceted. Understanding empathy's past is important to shaping its role in humanity's future.
The current Oxford English Dictionary highlights two definitions for empathy:
1. The ability to understand and appreciate another person's feelings, experience.
2. The quality or power of projecting one's personality into or mentally identifying oneself with an object of contemplation, and so fully understanding or appreciating it. (Now rare).
Upon asking people what first comes to mind when they hear the word "empathy", a considerable portion of people associated the term with "compassion", "sharing" and the ability to "put yourself in another person's shoes".
We can trace this interpretation back to the early twentieth century. In 1909, the English psychologist Edward Titchener coined the term "empathy" as a translation of the German concept "einfühlung". Titchener associated the word empathy to the centuries-old concept that humans possess the capacity to understand and identify with another person's situation.
By 1932, empathy became a widely accepted term amongst psychologists and often conflated with "compassion" and "sympathy".The word sympathy became associated with feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune. Empathy became an item of interest for neuroscientists, as well as a necessary component of patient-physician interactions and clinical practice.
Counsellors and psychotherapists have also recognised the value of empathy in recent decades, offering refined and focussed versions of empathetic relationships.
Historian of emotion, Tiffany Watt Smith, emphasises empathy's common modern meaning:
"a feeling of resonance between people rather than people and objects".
However, bridging empathy's roots in ancient Greek (literally meaning "in feeling") to modern notions of empathy is the word einfühlung.
German philosopher Robert Vischer first mentioned the word in his 1873 doctoral thesis 'On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics' whereby einfühlung involved projecting internal thoughts, experiences and emotions to transform objects into "shared, a universally valued human possession" - otherwise known as art.
In the remaining decades of the nineteenth century, psychologists, aestheticians and architects, such as Robert Zimmermann and Johannes Volkelt, popularised Vischer's essay. Another German philosopher named Theodor Lipps elaborated on Vischer's work by developing a theory of aesthetics based on the pleasure principle.
Einfühlung was described by Lipps as:
"the act of projecting oneself into the object of a perception".
In her book 'Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual', art historian Lynn Gamwell explains:
"Someone looking at a painting or listening to music finds joy in projecting his or her own emotions onto the aesthetic object - feeling empathy for it. Aesthetic experience is pleasurable, according to Lipps, because humans are basically narcissistic; in loving an artwork viewers (by empathetic projection) are loving themselves." (page 142)
Empathy continues to be framed in terms of a judgment based on former personal experience, unconscious analogy and inference. Through interpreting art, the self can imaginatively merge with an object of contemplation, allowing a transaction of empathy to take place.
Interestingly, in response to my question "what first comes to mind when you hear the word empathy?", no one's answer involved art. Empathy appeared to exclusively refer to person-to-person emotional connections, although more ambiguous answeres like "pang of emotion" and a "reactive feeling" suggest connotations to art.
Placing empathy in its German origins as einfühlung drives us to reflect upon our interactions with creative expression. When we empathise with a song, are we identifying with the lyrics, or are we feeling for the musician? When we empathise with a piece of visual art, are we trying to replicate the artist's vision or are we drawing upon our own experiences?
Lipps used the framework of aesthetic empathy to explain how people experience inanimate objects, but also how they understand the mental states of other people. This extension of einfühlung's meaning sparked a new branch of interdisciplinary research in the overlap between psychology and philosophy.
In 1991, American social psychologist Daniel Batson formed an empathy-altruism hypothesis suggesting that if someone feels empathy towards another person, they will help them, regardless of what they can gain from it. Batson's psychological studies took place once empathy's meaning was consolidated as the capacity to place oneself in another's position.
A perceived lack of empathy, commonly referred to as apathy, is therefore a symptom of psychological illness in individuals and a sign of moral decline in society. Psychologists associate the inability to feel or exhibit cognitive empathy with several neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism and sociopathy. Cultivating empathy is also an important part of children’s development.
Regarding collective society, Barack Obama stated in a 2006 interview with Oprah that he was more worried about an “empathy deficit” in America than a trade or budget deficit. In October 2018, a YouGov survey found 51% of people think empathy has declined.
Empathy matters in politics. People need to believe that their elected leader is someone who understands them. People also find comfort in knowing others in society share their values. A perceived lack of empathy results in disillusionment and translates into a desire for emotional justice, exemplified following the UK general election results:
The democratic framework involves a systematic transfer of power from citizens to an elected leader. Empathy gives us the confidence to trust in a political candidate. We vote for the candidate that empathises with our needs and desires and, if we identify with a candidate's manifesto and values, we empathise with them.
Politicians know this. They can perform empathy to demonstrate their ability to identify and understand the needs of the electorate.
Empathy has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of pathos, meaning feeling or suffering. Aristotle categorised pathos as a mode of persuasion appealing to human emotion. Empathy is part of the art of persuasion, an invaluable tool in politics.
However, in his book ‘Against Empathy’, psychologist Paul Bloom claims that the issue is not about whether to empathise in political debates. It's about whom to empathise with. Bloom emphasises that we should instead look at statistics, not appeal to passions. Statistics, as a form of fact, fall under the ancient Greek term logos meaning reason.
However, pathos is not an enemy of logos. The two often work collaboratively.
Just prior to Trithner's translation of einfühlung to empathy in 1909, German art historian Wilhelm Worringer published a book dividing art into two kinds: the art of abstraction (associated with a more 'primitive' worldview) and the art of empathy (associated with realism).
Notably, several of the people I asked regarding their initial thoughts on empathy responded with "self-improvement" or "an important skill". Since the twentieth century, psychology has modelled empathy as a learnt measurable trait. Consequentially, there has been a surge in accessible literature popularising the notion that honing empathic skills will help you develop positive mental health and support healthy empathy in yourself and others.
Yet simultaneously, empathy is also framed as a trait requiring management to maximise its benefits and avoid becoming a burden. This idea frequently appeared in responses to my question regarding initial thoughts on empathy. We live in a culture obsessed with labelling parts of our identity. The word 'empath' commonly applies as a personality type to describe people who deeply understand other people's feelings and often carry them as their own. I am often guilty of using this label to describe myself.
Originally used in twentieth century science fiction, the term 'empath' referred to an individual's supernatural ability to feel, and sometimes manipulate, other people's emotions. Nowadays, empaths are often portrayed as sensitive individuals consumed by other people’s problems, bleak worldly affairs and moral injustices. Modern psychology claims that too much empathy is unhealthy. Empaths may experience an excess of empathy. This can lead to what some psychologists have termed 'compassion-fatigue' and literature advising empaths on how to manage their emotions has surged.
I wouldn't say I'm a reformed empath - I'm still a highly empathetic person, in all meanings of the word. I have merely learnt to appreciate my empathetic abilities and channel them productively through therapeutic creative self-expression, advocacy, and forming healthy relationships with others.
If empathy is a reactive emotion, be it an act of altruism or egotism, learnt or innate, then it doesn't have to be synonymous with sympathy.
As Susan Lanzoni, historian of psychology and author of 'Empathy: A History', highlights in a recent article:
“Rekindling aesthetic empathy might help us better appreciate and tend to the natural world. If we feel more akin to our natural environment, we will be more likely to respond to it with care and concern. At a time of rapid climate change, such a response is more critical than ever. Empathy, understood historically in all its varieties, has the power to link us not only to other people, but also to the shapes and forms in our world.”
I couldn't agree more.
Further Reading:
Books
Susan Lanzoni, Empathy: A History
Rob Boddice, The Science of Sympathy
David Howe, Empathy: What it is and why it matters
Blog posts & Articles