How Does Affect Theory Explain the Care in a Caring Person?

• Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
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    • Caring? Love? Sympathy? by Don Nathanson, 3/22/97
      
      

Don, there is a place in your reply where I seem to first loose you. The impression occurs to me at that point that something just went sweeping by me and I missed it. Please see if you would be willing to say more about the place where this happens to me. You wrote:

"And if the response to affective resonance includes soul searching and the decision to help the other by providing modulation for that affect, then Wispe is describing what Basch called "mature empathy," and the actions taken next by a caring person may be understood as skills rather than a subset of sympathy."

Where I get the impression I am really missing something is when you refer to a "caring person." If a caring person is someone who would respond with a decision to help another by providing affect modulation (or by any other action, whether effectively helpful or not), what it there precisely in Affect Theory that explains why someone would do such a thing as act to help another rather than just help oneself to the handiest escape from distressing resonance? This question asks, how would Affect Theory explain the caring in a caring person. Wispe and I and others, who believe in a mammalian altruistic motive, seem to think that affective resonance and "mature empathy" only explain why I would want to help to alleviate my own TRUE affect (yes, sorry, it's not vicarious) that is in resonance. Couldn't I do that by turning my gaze, for example? Why would I necessarily want to help another? Isn't "mature empathy" an empathy that leads to helping another and not just oneself? If Affect Theory can explain altruism AS altruism and not just as an alleviation of one's own resonating affect I do not yet see how it does so. If you could clarify how Affect Theory explains why I would want to help another for the other's sake and not just for my own sake, I would be grateful. I think if I understood that, I would probably understand other questions that occur to me about your last posting in this thread.

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