#empathyexams

[abigailkart]

March 21, 2020

society6.com/abiwhales

depop.com/whelf

[subwaybookreview]

Melissa: “This is a pretty excellent book. All of the essays are very different but all get back to the same theme, which is empathy. I’ve read the first half in about 12 hours. What’s interesting is that we can practice empathy in many aspects of life. A few minutes ago I saw someone drag a suitcase up the stairs and a stranger helped them out. I thought that was really great. I don’t think I help people enough. I think it comes from a fear of me coming across as awkward. It’s better to act on impulse. When someone needs something, just help out. Don’t overthink it.” @mellynnewelch #EmpathyExams #LeslieJamison / @theubc for #subwaybookreview #newyork 🗽 (at L Train)

[wastedwinter]

It’s not just that violence happens here—intentional, casual, accidental, incidental—it’s that the prospect and the aftermath of violence are constantly crowding you from all sides: men with machine guns on the Avenida Revolución, growling dogs leaping into SUVs to sniff for drugs, a drunk passed out in front of the panaderia, a driver so tired or tweaking he barrels his semi into a cliff.

Leslie Jamison, from “La Frontera”, The Empathy Exams p.61

[autoamnesiac-blog]

“….. the possibility of fetishizing pain is no reason to stop representing it. Pain that gets performed is still pain.”

Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams

[katelyn-phillips]

Blog #9

One of my first thoughts after reading “Empathy Exams,” was that it reminded me of “Are You My Brain Double?”. The part when they talk about what parts of the brain are engaged when hearing another person’s story and empathizing with them, was similar to when the girl told her story and found someone with the same brain pattern as her when telling the story. The two stories are similar because when the brain feels pain certain areas are engaged, and those happen to be the same as when you empathize with someone who has felt that pain.

I also think this story relates to fiction because one of the greatest things about fiction is living through the character and empathizing with what they are going through. Fiction is so popular, in my opinion, because the characters get to do things most people don’t do on a daily basis, and that’s what makes it so entertaining. Empathy is important because it helps us feel connected and closer to the characters in a book, or even the people in our lives. 

This connects to the medical professionals and the actors portraying ailments because if the doctors don’t have empathy toward the patients (or actors in this case), no one in going to want to open up to them and they may not have the whole truth in order to correctly diagnose them. As a pharmacy student, I think this story was so interesting because I have never thought about how important it is to empathize with the patient in order to create a trusting relationship, but it makes so much sense. The medical professionals need practice to help empathize with actors so, when the time comes and they have real patients, they can empathize with them and correctly identify their ailments. If they can’t empathize with the patients, they won’t be able to diagnose the patients, or worse, incorrectly diagnose them.

[stephenlamb82]

Empathy is always perched precariously between gift and invasion. Empathy isn't just remembering how to say "that must be really hard"--it's figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn't just listening, it's asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see. A 1983 study titled "The Structure of Empathy" found a correlation between empathy and four major personality clusters: sensitivity, nonconformity, even temperedness, and social self-confidence. I like the word "structure." It suggests empathy is an edifice we build like a home or office--with architecture and design, scaffolding and electricity. The Chinese character for "listen" is built like this, a structure of many parts: the characters for ears and eyes, a horizontal line that signifies undivided attention, the swoop and teardrops of heart. Rating high for the study's "sensitivity" cluster feels intuitive. It means agreeing with statements like "I have at one time or another tried my hand at writing poetry" or "I have seen some things so sad they almost made me feel like crying" and disagreeing with statements like: "I really don't care whether people like me or dislike me." This last one seems to suggest that empathy might be, at root, a barter, a bid for others' affection: "I care about your pain" is another way to say "I care if you like me." We care in order to be cared for. We care because we are porous. The feelings of others matter, they are like matter: they carry weight, exert gravitational pull. ...We should empathize from courage, is the point--and it makes me think about how much of my empathy comes from fear. I'm afraid other people's problems will happen to me, or else I'm afraid other people will stop loving me if I don't adopt their problems as my own.

Some favorite lines from the eponymous essay in Leslie Jamison's new book, "The Empathy Exams."