Thanks For Your Thoughtful Input, Margaret

    Shame and Affect Theory (Nathanson)
    • Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
      • (...)
        • Sympathy, Empathy, etc. by Margaret Blakely, 3/23/97

    Thanks For Your Thoughtful Input, Margaret
    by Jim Duffy, 3/23/97

    Margaret, I very much appreciate your taking the time to share and explore with us your reactions in this thread. Your warmth is apparent to me and your daring expression of appreciation, that you have told us about, of those who work with you or for you is something that I admire and keep in memory for my own use when I need reminded that I can do this do since Margaret does.

    Your observations, in agreement with Chauncey's, that you could identify the shaming connotations surrounding the concept of sympathy, are reassuring to me. Perhaps none of you has witnessed the outright disparagement of this concept to the extent I have at some workshops and in the company of certain associates. I have heard sympathy spoken of as if it needed to be placed foursquare dead-center in the middle of the land of stupidity, if not malice; so I was given to understand from early in my psychology career that this particular s-word should not be spoken of as something respectable psychologists would want to be too closely associated with, at least not in their professional conduct. We could speak of it, but only in private and if we washed our hands afterwards. But when I realized I no longer had to be ashamed of liking the idea and the experience of sympathy in myself or others, I was then, of course, left feeling ashamed of having been ashamed of sympathy. One can feel ashamed to confess one has nothing to confess when realizing one was ashamed of something that isn’t shameful. And notwithstanding your and Don’s efforts to educate me out of my recalcitrance, I’m still in the pickle of confessing I have nothing to confess about my fondness for altruism and its expression in sympathy.

    It may surprise you to know that I interpreted your above posting as the expression of an informed, empathic, and genuinely altruistic concern for helping others inasmuch as you described so well a knowledge of how best to go about doing so in a way that is both likely to be effective and not demeaning or otherwise shaming. You advised, correctly in my opinion, that empathic resonance is typically just what is needed for psychotherapy to be helpful, thus expressing your own sympathetic interest in being helpful and, moreover, demonstrating your mature skill in being able to be helpful in a way that is most judiciously and comprehensively applied so as not to shame the recipient of your help with an implication of superiority. That’s a wonderful example of what I would call an intention to be really helpful indeed.

    I am still exploring the many explanations of how such an altruistic enterprise got such bad press as something undeserving of being associated with the word "sympathy." Is it really just a matter of terminology or is it a matter of disavowal of the interest and motive to altruistically help others in distress when we empathically resonate with their distress?

    Thanks again for your input, Margaret. You and Don may disagree, but I am still open to being persuaded I am wrong in continuing to believe that “mature empathy” (a la Basch) does include an urge to be altruistically helpful and, thus, is a concept equivalent in meaning to sympathy. If "mature empathy" is a way of relating helpfully as well as a way of knowing another's affect via one's own resonating affect, then "mature empathy" is the same as sympathy and terminology is the only obstacle to mutual understanding. But if "mature empathy" is just a way of knowing another's affect with no implication of an urge to help alleviate the other's plight, then "mature empathy" is not a concept sufficient to explain what happens when therapists use their empathy to be helpful to others. "Sympathy" has been doing this explanatory service for many years but has yet to receive proper recogntion for this service in the psychotherpeutic community.

    ...................

    P..S. Just a quick note to let anyone interested know one of the things I think about (when trying to account for how sympathy got shamed) is found in Kant’s enormous influence with his cold notion that ethical conduct could (indeed SHOULD) be carried out by consulting one’s intellect alone--i.e., affective resonance with others’ suffering supposedly would provide no useful service in guiding ethical conduct! That’s one mistake Tomkins’s followers are not likely to make. Chauncey referred to a systems-wide normative obstacle to understanding sympathy with which I also agree. And I think there are many more reasons.


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