Empathy Disturbance/Disorder

I remember asking someone many many years ago the following question... 

 

Is empathy like
(1) an ever flowing fountain OR
(2) a pie that is baked daily?

 

 

In response to a statement that the significant other who works in a caring profession appears to have a lot of empathy at work but none left for him. 

 

In the ever flowing fountain analogy, I can currently think about a colleague whom I had just gone out on a home visit.  I saw sincerity in her eyes, genuine concern for a fellow human and empathy.  My colleague is married and has children.  From my shallow understanding of my colleague, I sense continued care and warmth towards her family.  That, to me, is what I consider an ever flowing fountain. 

 

In the pie that is baked daily analogy, I think of one who struggles with empathy.  At times, there is sufficient for the work day (but maybe insufficient to spill into personal life).  Other times, there is insufficient to last the day.  At times, the empathy is half-baked (in that it is not really useable and may crumble apart at the most untimely of moments or that empathy is compartmentalised for use in different areas and in varying proportions).  Other times, the empathy is un-useable.  At times, the empathy wears that person down. 

 

You will not believe, in the course of researching this post, I found the following relevant information about Empathy Deficit Disorder (EDD) (of course, not a real psychiatric disorder but one coined by a few professionals):

• http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-resilience/201004/are-you-suffering-empathy-deficit-disorder,  Personally, I disagree that "EDD grows when people focus too much on acquiring power, status, and money for themselves".  My thoughts are that many significant life events (e.g., suicide, death, significant loss, trauma) or neurodevelopmental issues (e.g., ASD, ADHD) can lead to EDD.
• http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/06/18/o.empathy/index.html

My personal thoughts on this matter, being one with baked empathy, is that I believe that humans have evolved over time to not be a "one size fits all" model.  I hypothesise that some of us (human race) are empathy fountains while others are empathy pies.  When we look at evolution, we clearly see how the fountains among us are the nurturers (as my colleague clearly is) while the pies among us are more geared towards less emotion-intensive and more solution-focussed modes.  Don't get me wrong.  My colleague is very good at coming up with solutions.  (In fact, she takes so many facets into account that I wonder how she does it!)  However, if we draw inspiration from a factory production line, what we see is that productivity may well improve when we start specialising.  From the evolution perspective, we also see that pies among us usually have to take the tough decisions without bringing emotion into it. 

If we follow the life of the production line, we can see that specialisation brings along issues too.  It is difficult to replace a sick production line worker due to the degree of specialisation.  In addition, specialisation leads to boredom which can, over time, decrease productivity (read this as hamper evolution).  Thus, in order to the combat the abovementioned flaws, workers are made to learn a different job; then they swap jobs when things become too monotonous and predictable.  Hence, back to my hypothesis, there may be some of us who are not pure fountains or pies -- but rather a combination of both. 

 

Of course, there is also another aspect to the empathy pie analogy -- that is, there are some of empathy pies that do not fit in to the evolutionary picture.  By this, I refer to people with certain personality disorders (see http://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/malignant-self-love/empathy-and-personality-disorders/).  Alternatively, I could be wrong because it can also be argued that people with certain personality disorders do fit into the evolutionary picture in that they have lost the ability to bake empathy in order to survive this world which may be perceived as cruel, dangerous and unpredictable.  Afterall, some narcissists and psychopaths do end up being parents. 

Something else for you to read:

• http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/30/mind-reading-psychologist-simon-baron-cohen-on-empathy-and-the-science-of-evil/
• http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/454817.html.

So, there you go...  My dear colleague, if you are reading this, you know I am writing about you.