Week Five

I have had a hard time deciding what to write about for this week.  A friend of mine suggested that I talk about how, in our neck of the woods, we are inbetween seasons.   How the leaves are changing into brilliant colors of red and yellow, but we don't need to worry about heavy coats and rain gear yet.  This got me thinking about the other inbetween areas of my life, and how my feelings about empathy have been evolving.

I have always prided myself on being a very empathetic person.  I felt like I was good at understanding other people's feelings, even if I didn't agree with them.  Merriam Webster's online dictionary defines empathy in much the same way as I learned in my past undergraduate studies:

I was introduced to an entirely different view of empathy while I was at the AAPC conference a few weeks ago.  The keynote speaker, Dr. David L. Calof, described empathy as the ability to hear a person's life story and think to yourself, "if I had lived this life I would have done the exact same thing."  Upon hearing this I had an immediate visceral reaction.  Does this mean that when I am counseling an inmate I am suppose to think "if I had lived their life I would have raped that child too?"  I have a hard time with that concept.

I found this notion of empathy echoed in the text book we are using in the Counseling Skills and Therapeutic Interventions course that I am taking at Cherry Hill Seminary.  Our main textbook included a quote from Rogers, Gendlin, Kieslter & Truax* about a counselors ability to "understand" a clients antisocial behavior.

Thus, the therapist's acceptance may be based upon the feeling. "If I had had the same background, the same circumstances, the same experiences, it would be inevitable in me, as it is in this client, that I would act in this fashion."  In this respect he is like the good parent whose child, in a moment of fear and panic, has defecated in his clothing.  The reaction of the loving parent includes both caring for the child, and acceptance of the behavior as an entirely natural event under the circumstances.  This does not approve of such behavior in general.

Puting this in terms of parenting a child does help me appreciate the concept of empathy being a form of radical acceptance, however it does not solve all of my concerns with this view.  While it is true that many of the inmates I work with have come from absolutely horrific backgrounds, and that these have no doubt led them towords criminal activities, it is also true that I know many people who have come from equally horrific backgrounds who have not been drawn to act out in criminal ways.

I think that my barrier to embracing this form of empathy comes when I am working with someone who has committed a crime against a child or a sexual crime.  I find both of these antisocial activities to be particularly objectionable.  As a mother, and as a victim of child sexual abuse, it is no wonder that I feel this way.  And yet do these feelings preclude me from being able to get into an inmates shoes?  Does it need to stop me from understanding that they were seeking to meet some basic need, and that it went horribly astray?

To be quite honest, for the moment it does. I am not yet evolved enough to be able to entirely put aside the very strong feelings that I have about child abuse and sexual assault.  I am however able to put them aside enough that I can connect with where the inmates is today.  Today they may be missing their own child and family.  They may be being harassed by other inmates who know about their crime.  They are likely facing a very long stretch of time in prison and are fearful of how they will cope with it.  They may have a history of pain that is wearing their heart down, and it is coupled with guilt and shame that is weighting down their soul.  These experiences I can feel sympathy for and can connect with.

This is where I will have to start.  In time I may be able to embody Calof's version of empathy, but for now my eyes are open to where I am at and where I might journey.  All I can do is watch what happens in my own heart and mind as it is challenged by working with lovely people who have done horrible things.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

Mohsin Hamid 

* Counseling and Therapy Skills, third edditin, by David S. Martin, page 88.