Empathy...how many of us have it?
Dr. Straker’s paper reveals some particularly important questions for the reader. What do we do if our own morality comes into question? How can we be empathetic to those who we might not agree with? These questions get right to the heart of the article. In the paper Dr. Straker deals with the fact that one of her patients, Stanley,—one who she supports politically and emotionally—relishes a murder that took place at the hands of a frenzied mob. Dr. Straker tires to justify supporting Stanley despite her repulsion to his actions. She manages to do so—to an extent—by saying that Stanley represented “goodness, hope” and all that is good in the world.
I have a similar problem as Dr.Straker and it involves my feelings of empathy towards those who are less fortunate than I—not that I am fortunate anyway. Television adds that tell me “just a dollar a day could save little Becky’s life” along with the media’s constant need to show images of carnage and horror amount to what Jean Baudrillard calls disaster pornography. My aversion to these media images has allowed me to pass by the homeless without being able to acknowledge them in their downtrodden state. I have, to some extent, become closed off to my fellow man.
While Dr. Straker’s scenario is not completely synonymous with my own, they still both deal with understanding our empathetic relationship to the Other. Her own moral values are in conflict with Stanley’s actions. My moral values are in question because I can have more sympathy for a suffering animal than I do for a suffering person.
Having said that, let me back track a little and do some more explaining. Bauldrillard also talks about “compassion fatigue” where an individual is so oversaturated with images of horror it becomes difficult for him/her to be empathetic. When someone hears about “little Becky” how many people actually care, and of those who care how many of them believe that their money actually gets to Becky?
I think that there is no hard and fast answer, but what I think helps to make it easy is for individuals to leave room for change in their concepts of morality, ethics, empathy and any other important concepts that relate to how we understand the world and interact with each other. Vera, I am hoping, will assist in this process of learning and being open to change. And so I leave my fellow class mates with a few questions.
1) Is someone internally bankrupt if he can turn a blind eye to suffering?
2) Am I morally bankrupt for being able to be more sympathetic towards a suffering animal than a suffering person?
3) How and why should we be empathetic in world that continues to make it difficult?
4) What are the implications of a media filled with images of horror and its effect on how we empathize with others and understand ourselves?
Chad Out!
28 comments:
Thank you, Chad, for posting a thoughtful prompt and for doing so quickly. I’m eager to share my thoughts. I apologize in advance for the length of my post that may extend 2 or 3 entries.
I find Straker’s essay very problematic. Okay, I’ll just say it: I am disturbed by her more than I am by Stanley. Let me try to explain.
Straker is a therapist whose job is to help her patient transcend his emotional and psychological issues. Her “confessional” in this piece reveals (to me) her limitations as a therapist. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s perfectly appropriate to be as honest as possible in trying to come to terms with one’s own feelings and thoughts—whether you’re the “therapist” or not. I’m not sure she chose the right venue to do so for her own issues—because publishing in an academic journal is an end-point for discussion (for her, not for readers). The author mentions this article is based on a conference talk where there is more opportunity (than in a static, published article) for her to get feedback from others as she engages in the process of her own transcendence. But I don’t see that her point in this piece is her OWN transcendence.
Why am I saying this? Straker talks about the political violence of apartheid and says that “politically” she’s on Stanley’s “side”—she believes apartheid should be dismantled. But she’s MORALLY repulsed seeing Stanley get into a trance-like state, ecstatic-almost in the face of the horrific murder of a woman—a murder in which he participated.
But the political and STRUCTURAL violence of apartheid is not some “abstraction” out there that can be set aside, imagined simplistically as background for the events that unfolded. I don’t get a sense from Straker that she deeply understands the ways in which the systematic violence of apartheid is intimately integrated into the being that became Stanley and how it set the parameters of “choice” for all the Stanleys, and how apartheid is an extremely violent social engineering project that systematically dehumanizes, excludes, marginalizes, and disvalues a particular group and the individuals who belong to that group. Stanley’s personal identity became muddled with the dehumanizing ideologies that he did not create but had to endure, and HIS wounds intensified—and surfaced—and murder is part and parcel of THAT.
As his therapist, Straker, in my view, might have done the work she needed to do to understand how that part worked, and then—when hearing and seeing Stanley’s descriptions and responses to the murder—she might have been enraged—appalled at the IMMORALITY of the social structure that set the stage for the events that did unfold. Stanley might have benefited from a therapist who understood that Stanley is himself a product of apartheid (as was she) even as he retained enough of his humanity to stand up and resist it, and even as the forces of apartheid were so overwhelming that the only place to direct his violent rage was against one even more vulnerable—a black South African woman. Instead, Stanley is Straker’s fetishized object of her moral outrage whereas she leaves “apartheid” unanalyzed—it escapes her indignation. I would have wished for Stanley to have a therapist who would have helped him out of the “trance”—the trance is for me a signal that Stanley DOES have a sense of his own individual responsibility in the murder. And it was in that moment the therapist had the opportunity to revile apartheid and help her client.
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continued from previous entry...
As for Chad’s questions about compassion fatigue, I just want to say that I understand what you are saying. It is a terrible irony that we live in an ever-growing militarized society—an ever-growing militarized world where war is ubiquitous, where there is more poverty than ever before, and where basic human rights are systematically denied by POWERFUL forces (last night’s JJ-student organized event on torture brought this point home so effectively). In this context, we get bombarded with calls to “help”—(as Zizek notes, we’re implored to “buy this cup of coffee and feed a kid”—so the system does not have to). Those folks featured in the NY Times magazine that Professor Stein notes—they’re good people and I am sure they are doing good work and I am glad they are doing THAT work and not joining the military. Those activities alone won’t necessarily bring long-term, sustainable solutions (again as Hilfiker so rightly points out). I believe the solution has to be based on understanding that the suffering is rooted in powerful systems and structures that need to be dismantled at the same time as alternative systems and structures need to be built. That way individual compassion gets directed in fruitful ways—there will be less compassion fatigue, it’s all not such an uphill battle. This is why I like the Partners In Health model. Although PIH faces an ongoing battle against power and against time, its approach incorporates tackling multiple layers at once: contesting political and structural violence (see, for example, the report “Wòch nan Soley: The Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti”—available online), it always works WITH the public sector not against it (see the NGO Code of Conduct), it is itself defined by local partners to build sustainable, public-sector infrastructure (jobs, housing, health facilities, water projects, agriculture, etc). There are now 11,000 partners in Partners In Health. Sure there are problems, contradictions and issues. But it’s a model of collective social transformation that builds on and does not destroy human dignity.
Chad,
Thank you for an interesting post!
Your discussion on disaster pornography is surprising but not unbelievable. I think that if one sees enough of a shocking scene or image, one can get numb to its implications.
I also see "little Becky" on T.V. and the homeless man on the street, and although I do have compassion for them in their respective conditions, I do not give money, nor am I moved to give money to them. However, I realize that I am not moved to give precisely because I am skeptical about whether or not the money will be used for its intended purpose for the improvement of either of their conditions. I work hard for, and also to keep, the little money that I have, and although I do not mind sharing with or giving to those in need, I do not intend to donate my money carelessly. So, my point is that I am not averse to giving because I am emotionally numb to the shocking images played before me on a regular basis; instead, I am averse to the extremely high possibility of fraud.
I want to address some ideas regarding the Straker article, posited in class and in posts, that I believe represent a fundamental misreading of Straker, both in content and in purpose. And then I hope to lay a bit of a foundation for discussion of how I see the relevance of the piece for work in the Vera spinoff agencies, indeed for any work with individuals who are struggling both within systems of oppression and with personal demons that may be visiting them for any number of reasons, including-but certainly not limited to-being politically disenfranchised.
Straker has written this article, in large part, because she recognizes a few things. First, that Stanley (and herself) are products of a brutal system that has undermined their humanity, manipulated their affections, and has left Stanley no recourse but to violence. That violence is accompanied by a psychic numbness that not only prevents him from feeling guilty about his part in Maki Sosa’s death but blinds him to the fact that he may have been used as a tool by the apartheid regime which pitted blacks against other blacks. Hence, his “dissociation” is both affective and cognitive, both a consequence of violence and its cause. Far from ignoring structural violence, Straker implicates it as a distal driver of Stanley’s actions, even as mob mentality is a more proximate cause. Second, Straker is completely aware of her position of privilege in apartheid South Africa and wants to bring to light the often unacknowledged conflicts attendant upon politically working to dismantle systems from which one benefits, and the complicated task of treating patients when one is mired in such conflicts but doesn’t become conscious of them. This is an important observation because of what she wishes the article to accomplish for her intended audience.(Continued on next post)
Straker’s audience is not politicians, sociologists, or the general public. She is not writing a treatise about the causes of rebellion or radicalization or even violence. She is writing about her clinical experience of working with patients who have been victimized by groups of which the therapist is a part, even though the therapist may be working to dismantle those systems. Straker is writing for Israeli therapists working with children on the West Bank and Gaza, American therapists treating Afghanis, New Zealand psychologists counseling Maoris, etc. All of these clinicians must address unsettling feelings of split allegiances, opposing moralities, and love twinned with repulsion.
Straker does not believe that Stanley’s trance means he has no feelings. Quite the contrary, she believes that the feelings are so intensely powerful that they overwhelm his capacity to process them and as a therapist, she has been trained to believe that her job is to help him process them. Yet she must face her own dissociation of painful feelings first and process them, if she is to help Stanley. This brings her to another awful place because she realizes that most therapy is post-traumatic-you help people be less defensive about things that are no longer dangerous to them-but Stanley is being treated even as he still needs those defenses because the danger is real and present. How to help him process some things, like his fear and guilt over possibly putting his family in danger, while leaving him with enough defenses to function as a political rebel?
These are questions we grapple with whenever we work with individuals from oppressed populations. Often our moralities are split; we both vilify the oppressive system but can’t particularly bring ourselves to excuse the horrific acts of violence of individuals even as we understand them. We want to recognize the multiple inputs to people’s actions; there are wide variations in individuals’ responses to the systems they live in. Some become rebels and others flunkies. Abused children sometimes grow up to be abusive adults while others found organizations to remediate violence. Some people go once to jail, are scared out of their minds and subsequently never jaywalk. Others find a home in a jail cell. And no matter how much we want to claim we know causes, we do not know them completely. Variation alone suggests that each person’s actions are outcomes of social position and cultural forces, personal temperament, parental modeling, idiosyncratic developmental experiences, neurochemical patterns, etc. The question is, how do we work with what we do know to do some good? And if we each choose a different part of the human project to work on, even if we dream idealistically of creating more holistic solutions, can’t that be okay (even as we recognize it isn’t enough)?
Professors Waterston – I share and understand many of your concerns about the therapist’s role in the situation with Stanley and how her concentration on herself might distort the message she might want to send. However, is there a way in which a therapists/analyst can engage in the process of understanding the “Other” without somehow implicating himself/herself? In your view is there a room for subjectivity in the role of the analyst? As much as Dr. Straker might want to be just a silent body listing to Stanley, she still has a social position in relation to him and to institutions that shape his political position. I think it might be fatal to leave her subjectivity out of the question particularly if she is an ally and needs to come to terms with her own conflicting moral viewpoints.
Jamie – thank you for responding. Does your fear of “fraud,” that inhibits your will to give, mean that you allow your finical instincts to overpower your ability to help Others? In other words if you were placed in a precarious position where someone required your help, but there is the possibility that they could be defrauding you, do you turn a blind eye?
Professor Stein – Professor Stein makes some very important points. Dr. Straker’s paper is less for the oppressed and more for those who are trying to side with them. But the shock she displays shows that she sits form a position of privilege far removed from the horrors of apartheid. The fact that she has a ‘moral’ dilemma seems antithetical to the very fight against apartheid. Those who are oppressed have less room to have a moral dilemma because they fight for their lives. How important is it for Dr. Straker to confront her moral dilemma, not just for herself, but for the movement against apartheid itself?
Chad Out!
Chad,
I do not use only my "financial instinct"; I use ALL my instincts. If someone needs a helping hand, I will be more willing to give my time and energy to help their cause than if they were, to say, to ask for my money. However, once a substantial amount of money is required from me, then I will request or need much more information about the situation before I acquiesce. So to answer your question, no, I would not be "turning a blind eye"; instead, I will be expecting pertinent DETAILS before I ever reach into my pocket.
I wished to comment specifically on three things.
Firstly, professor Waterston's comment regarding the fact the in dealing with Stanley what should have been criticized was the immoral aparthied system an not his actions which may have been a direct result of them. Granted this sort of analysis would benefit a human rights activist or politician, I believe however would be detrimental to the patient-doctor situation which played out in the article. That sort of approach would not allow for Stanley to alter his views or emotions on the event, it would not help the patient. Her role as his doctor was to focus on HIS specific issue and aid him with it, grant a sort of instant gratification through therapy. If she would afterward turn her energy to solving the bigger issue spectacular, but only after dealing with Stanley's dillema. The world would be a diseased place if doctors left to eradicate mosquito's carrying West Nile virus or Yellow fever rather than treating the patients in front of them plagued with the disease. First things first: patient. Leave the bigger picture problems for later, or to others overall, if it is in your capability to directly aid someone then do it. Not to mention it is your job.
Secondly to Jamie's concern about being defrauded, which I believe is directly tied to my third concern, Chad's question as to what we should do despite any tolerance to the suffering us. In both situations the answer is the same: help. Help if it is in your power to do so. Whether it is in time, money or energy if you are capable just do it.
Give a homeless man your change despite your friend's comment that such people earn more than you may. Send a check to Unicef despite the TON of subsequent mail you will get. Spend a day at a soup kitchen despite your backaches and tired feet. If you can. If you have the time, money or desire and if you do not I assure you no one will hold it against you.
Except possibly yourself directly after you did not just give up a little something for the good of someone else, I know I prefer to hear my fried say "You know he comes in to my Dunkin Donuts to exchange those coins you gave him" and my bulk mail from doctors without borders but feel a twang better that perhaps if I fall upon harder times someone would reach out to me.
Thank you for the post, Chad!
On one of the first classes, when we were discussing our core values, I remember Chad’s first value: sympathy. Sorry, but it is difficult for me to understand how you can have more sympathy to animals than humans. People might lie when asking for help. Therefore, I support Jamie’s idea on fraud. In the majority of the cases, however, they do not lie. It might be difficult for me to support your views on that because I am dealing with genocide in my classes every day. Mass atrocities happening all over the world cannot leave me indifferent.
I like Prof. Stein’s remark on the fact that innocent people were used as a “tool the apartheid regime which pitted blacks against other blacks.” To extent that point, innocent people are used as tools of mass killing and die as a result of the international policies. Superpowers dictate their rules and less developed countries become puppets in their hands. All of those “performances” have a common scenario. First, developed countries illegally provide people with weapons and start conflicts. They end them up with trying guilty ones in the ICC.
Horror of mass killings makes me pursue my future career in Political Science and International Relations. Hopefully, one day I will be able to find the answer to Prof. Stein’s question on how to prevent atrocities.
Alex – You make some very good points that helping for helping sake is important, whether in time or money. However, I do not share your optimism (surprisingly enough) about the ambivalence of individuals to just give of themselves because they can. More often than not, most people, before or after they give, enter into a series of mental calculation as to whether or not they themselves might need the money or time, or whether or not their time or money will be put to good use or kindly welcomed. I know I definitely calculate before I give; it sounds harsh but as many people as there are who are in need there are twice as many who are trying to take advantage of us. This perpetuates a punishment of all that sometimes leave those who actually need help out in the cold. But it is it productive to try and help someone who does not want to be helped; you expressed a problem with this yourself. So how can we just give of ourselves if we do not know that our time, effort or money will be spent or received well?
Nadiya—Sympathy and empathy were on my list because they were things I wanted to improve on, not necessarily because I was greatly sympathetic or empathetic. The goal was that my time with Vera would allow me to be more sympathetic and empathetic. However, I am very glad that you brought this question up because it brings me to a greater question about human relationship to one another and to the world. Why is it such a shock to you that I can be more sympathetic to an animal rather than a person? Are humans necessarily more ‘valuable’ than an animals, and if so why?
Chad Out!
I’m not sure I made my point clear so will try to clarify just a bit (specifically in reference to comments from both Professor Stein and Alex). Professor Stein writes, “…but [we]can’t particularly bring ourselves to excuse the horrific acts of violence of individuals even as we understand them.” To me it is not at all about “excusing” horrific acts of violence. As a therapist, it’s not her place to forgive or not to forgive Stanley, to excuse or not to excuse Stanley.
Truly grasping the full implications of how “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” (James Baldwin) is not about making excuses at all. Quite the contrary. I would think it would be difficult for the therapist to “help” the patient transcend the traumas—which includes helping the patient take ownership for his or her own role and actions (a necessary part of the healing process)—if that therapist is “stuck” on making moral judgments about that person. Wasn’t it Stanley’s very “symptoms” (trance; dissociation) that triggered her “moral” disgust? It is THAT aspect that I find disturbing—for someone who is supposed to be his therapist. Her essay would have read a lot differently had she viewed his "trance" and his "thrill" as a “therapeutic moment.” Or put another way, how would her essay have read if she viewed his "trance" and his "thrill" as a "therapeutic moment"?
I want to leave this very brief comment for now but will perhaps return later to ferret out the nuances.
1) Straker DOES think of Stanley's trance as containing the seeds of a therpaeutic moment in that it challenges her to challenge Stanley to become aware of his turning away from human emotion.
2)Straker is not saying that she should or shouldn't feel disgust, she is just honestly saying what she does feel: that she recognizes that a part of her wishes Stanley (and other people) could be all good or all evil because then she wouldn't feel conflicted, that she has to work to feel all her feelings (reverance, envy, disgust, fear, etc.) and incorporate them into the therapy somehow-although this does not mean saying them aloud to Stanley necessarily-if she is to help Stanley think about things that are too painful for him to think about.
As to Alex's point: Yes! No battered woman ever came to a therapist complaining about patriarchal oppression; no poor patient comes in saying that capitalism is their problem. People come saying they can't sleep, they have lost their appetite, they are afriad of their boyfriend. That's what you, the doctor, have to address. I have written, and believe deeply, that it is important to try to raise people's political consciousness in such circumstances but, in my experience, until they feel safe with you as a listener, and able to cope with their actual day-to-day lives, such education is generally neither embraced or appreciated.
I do think we are in agreement: the story is about Straker, not about Stanley.
I must add that I never suggested that in the therapeutic setting the therapist talks to patients about the larger "structural violences" that frame the individual's story. My point was simply that if Straker truly and deeply understood "structural violence" and its effects, she might not have directed (fetishized) her moral outrage in the patient himself.
Chad definitely had a tough topic to discuss this week. I know it is tough for me to comment on the topic of empathy.
Part I- Thoughts about Empathy:
How does someone express the complex emotion called empathy? Do we examine people’s actions to determine who has empathy and who doesn’t? Does a person simply need to feel another person’s sorrow to be called empathetic, or are great gestures of self sacrifice needed to acquire that characteristic?
Empathy is an emotion so complex that philosophers have spent their entire lives trying to define it; but what a dictionary defines in a few simple lines. What justice to the term could I do by attempting to even explain my thoughts on it? Could I say empathy is merely the act of giving alms or sacrificing personal time to aid people in need? Is empathy expressed by the sadness one feels upon hearing the loss of another? Does empathy’s true worth become illustrated when people rise up, bring forth the banner of justice and attempt to overthrow oppression?
I know there have been times I did not feel sympathy for someone’s needs. I know there have been times when my need for self preservation has blocked my need to aid. Does this make me not empathetic?
Part II – The Straker Story
We have discussed structural violence; systems that were failing there intended function, people who in the attempt to better the lives of others, destroyed some in the process. Now we are discussing issues of empathy along with all of these other issues.
I was thinking about this story we read, about the freedom fighter. I thought about the women who was tortured, executed, set ablaze and brutalized. I was thinking about Stanley a black man living within an oppressive state, under apartheid laws. Then I thought about what he did, what the women who was murdered did, what the counselor (Straker) was doing and how I felt about the idea of structural violence.
The counselor was trying to remain in her role, be subjective to the issues at hand, leave her emotions for her own therapy session and try to resolve the issues troubling her client. The story may have been her way of letting her emotions out, but at least she refrained from expressing them during her session with Stanley. She explained her sympathy for Stanley’s feelings and her dilemma about his actions. Still she never let Stanley know, only Stanley mattered during their discussion, Straker truly felt empathy for Stanley.
Stanley as for him, I personally feel he should expect to be punished for his actions, regardless if a system or structure was the cause of those actions. If he did what he did to any of your family or friends under the same circumstances could you say it was due to structural violence?
Empathy is such an interesting thing. I would say that in most instances I am quite empathetic. But, in others I have no empathy. I have a hard time feeling empathy for homeless individuals, I feel very much so how Jamie feels. I do not have the money to give, however, if I did have money I still would not find it in me to give it to them. Of course there is the thought that I do not know where the money is going; interestingly enough there is a new TV commercial that replaces the often seen male adult homeless population with children. It amazed me how my emotions changed because the individual was no longer an adult.
In addition,
The media plays such a large role in how people react to situations. I believe that the implications of the media can make it difficult for someone to empathize. There is no limit to what is shown on television, in movies, on billboards, etc. Anything from naked women, to people brutally killing people. I find it hard to watch the “Saw” movies. I watched the first and second, and then I saw the third and I could not handle it. It made me sick to my stomach. How can people endure these movies, how can they watch people being tortured? Even if it is not real, how can someone stand to think, to imagine, to believe, or to watch a human scream, bleed, cry, and beg for their lives? The media may create a situation where individuals become numb to the suffering of others, whether it is a scene in a movie, or a scene in a persons’ life.
Even though this example does not have to do with the media, it exemplifies how a persons’ empathy may be altered; A police officer sees humans, sometimes, in a way that most people will never view humans. They see how people act at their worst; they see people without skin, both metaphorically and physically. Police officers have to create numbness to what they see, they put up a wall, and would not react to situations the same way that pedestrians may react.
When you turn on the TV to watch the news, chances are it is sad, morbid, and pessimistic, really there are no good words that come to mind when I think of the news. We are surrounded by awful news constantly, but not only that, we see the awful happenings. Experiencing the “media filled with images of horror” becomes a norm; it is expected, and accepted.
I now have empathy for every student who gets on the blog only to find that a meaty discussion has been raging on without them.
This discussion got me thinking about something from another class. We've been reading Toni Morrison's BELOVED, a book based on a real-life incident where a former slave woman killed her child rather than have her and the child taken back into slavery. Morrison's brilliant novel explores precisely the questions we have been discussing. You start sort of where the reader does in the Straker piece: not being able to imagine any scenario in which a brutal murder is acceptable and certainly not able to imagine that murder could ever be an act of love. But then of course as you learn more about the social context (different of course than apartheid, but not completely unrelated) many previously unimaginable things become imaginable. Still, Morrison represents the resistance via the responses of different characters who think "there must have been another way" than murder. One of the wonderful achievements of this work is that she has a category of women who neither approve nor condone, but when the woman needs help they help. And all the helpers have their own stories who put them somewhere on the spectrum from "there must have been another way" to love=murder.
What we need is more BELOVED and less "Saw" (though, ironically, a saw is the murder weapon).
Dear Chad,
Thank you for your interesting post. Just to piggy back on what Joseph said, this article isn't so easy to comment on, there is so many sides we can view this article in. Nevertheless, I will comment on what intrigued me the most, Stanley's trance.
I believe to have sympathy in anything, we need to strongly believe and feel about certain ideals. But empathy is the exact opposite, rather than feeling and caring we are neither, we just view a situation that needs help as a lost cause that does not deserve assistance nor aid to help it rise. In this example, I see Stanley going about and hurting the woman that was being attacked. No one helped her, no one saw her pain and need for salvation, until Stanley smelled her burning hair. It was in that moment that this inhuman man became human, he felt, he was bothered, he was doubtful. But when he was in a trance and explained what he did to that woman, he wasn't human, he wasn't human because he didn't feel, he didn't acknowledge his wrong behavior, he didn't see the animal/ beast he became. Therefore, when his psycho analyst looked at him, she didn't stare at him with a face of understanding, it was a puzzled look mixed with shock. Puzzled because she must have thought "does he hear what he is saying" and shocked because "how can any person do what he did and not feel the harm/damage of their actions".
This is where my second point comes in, we spoke in class about disassociation. This term referring to the fact that people will hold back on a memory and or thought (painful thoughts) without knowing they do it. If not, they will giggle and or perhaps act calmly about a horrible situation in the past as a way to not feel without knowing they are doing it in the first place. This in fact is what Stanley did without acknowledgement when speaking about his actions. Nevertheless, this example of Stanley not acknowledging his emotions from the horrid act he committed isn't shocking because when I was small I use to do the same . When my parents got a divorce I never cared to make it such a big deal I would act as if my parents actions were normal. But it wasn't until I was a few years older that my mom had me sit and talk about what I felt about their divorce. It didn't occur to me that my mother divorced him because of his horrid actions that I, without knowing, pretend never happened. Reading this article made me see the past again, I saw myself acknowledging the truth and the gravity of it, unlike before when I saw it was something that never happened. Maybe I might not be using the term in its right way, but at some point I feel like I did. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Otherwise, thank you for your comment Chad, it was interesting.
Joseph – You are very correct Joseph, empathy is a complicated, powerful and detrimental emotion all in one. Evaluating empathy requires more work than we can elucidate on the blog. But more importantly I would like to address the latter part of your post. You indicate that “wrong” is wrong regardless of the structural motivators; you also place yourself—and the rest of the class as well—in the position of the family who is grieving for the burnt woman. While this is very good to do and can illuminate certain principles and understanding about the situation and about ourselves, I am afraid that a little more work is required here. I think it is important that we then also place ourselves in the shoes of Stanley who is living under the oppressive forces of South African Apartheid. I thing it is all too easy for people like myself who has never been in a situation like that to assume that ever under those circumstances that the morality of our actions are purely black and white. Think of it this way, it was the movement or her. It was either the successful overthrow of apartheid or the fear of a spy in their midst that could possibly derail the entire endeavor. I think this makes the moral choice a lot less clear.
Katie – I understand very clearly what you are saying Katie; it is true that we all have that emotive tick that allows us to feel sympathy/empathy for a particular group of people. I know it’s hard to look into a child’s face and tell him/her you don’t have, but we can pass an adult without thinking twice. We all assume children, the elderly and animals to be helpless and in need of our help, but if we see a young homeless 22 year old, there is no empathy to be spared. Can anyone articulate a reason for this? Professor Stein Probably?
Professor Reitz – Professor Reitz is correct in many ways. After further analysis we can see instances where the murder committed by Stanley equals love, a love for his own family under threat form the Apartheid Government and a love for his fellow South African. I always struggle with the question, “does the ends justify the means?” and I am not sure I have an answer, but I would think that in this case I would put aside my own personal feelings and help even if there might be “another way.”
Jessica – I think you bring to light one particularly important point, and that is, even if we are going to engage in horrific acts we must still hold on to our humanity. If we fight for freedom but lose our humanity in the process, then our efforts, the blood spilt, those who died, would all have been in vain. I think Stanley is absolved because of the circumstances that force him to act, but I think more importantly that his reaction to the smell of burning hair shows that he is still human, and despite his trance like state, that smell will haunt him and that shows the essence of his humanity.
Chad Out!
Katie, you moving description of your dissociation around your parents’ divorce is exactly what we have been discussing. Sometimes we really need to dissociate because we are not ready to feel. But this is not without a price. When we can’t acknowledge or remember what is painful, our emotions may assert themselves in different ways-sometimes destructive-that we don’t understand or can’t control. The struggle against our own dissociation is a struggle to know rather than repress, to understand rather than ignore, to incorporate the different parts of self rather than exile them, or pretend they don’t exist. Socrates may have been the first psychoanalyst when he said “a life unexamined is not worth living”; I would hold to that tenet. (We are just so much more captains of our ships when we understand the kind of baggage that is aboard.) Prof. Reitz reminded me, in her mention of Beloved, of Beloved’s haunting plea to “call me by my name” during lovemaking… to me, it always signaled the reclaiming of an identity that had been stolen from her, the reconstitution of memory. In violence-personal or structural- we always lose a piece of ourselves. Only when we recognize its loss, can the self again be found.
On another note, this blog go round has been a funny experience for me. Perhaps I am being paranoid but I feel defensive on Straker's behalf as many people seem to feel that she doesn't understand or care about apartheid. Indeed, she has spent a good deal of her life working to end it. For those of you who are interested, here is a smattering of some of her other writings. Next year, maybe I will include them in the Vera readings:
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER: A REACTION TO STATE-SUPPORTED CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT G Straker, F Moosa - Child abuse & neglect, 1988 - The policy of apartheid not only fosters conditions conducive to child abuse and neglect, but is in itself abusive. Apartheid policies have led to civil unrest and high levels of violence in South Africa's black townships. Many youth are thus exposed to multiple trauma including ...
INTERACTING WITH TRAUMA SURVIVORS IN CONTEXTS OF CONTINUING TRAUMA Straker… - Journal of traumatic stress, 1994 - Working with survivors of trauma always evokes strong reactions (Fischman, 1991; Raphael, 1986). When this work is conducted in a con- text of continuing civil conflict and political repression these reactions are intensified and their resolution is complicated. The reasons for this ...
FACES IN THE REVOLUTION: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF VIOLENCE ON TOWNSHIP YOUTH IN SOUTH AFRICA G Straker - 1992 - David Philip Publishers
ETHICAL ISSUES IN WORKING WITH CHILDREN IN WAR ZONESG Straker - Minefields in Their Hearts: The Mental Health of …, 1996 - books.google.com We begin with a chapter on ethical issues because ethical strains are inevitable for anyone working with children in contested situations. Because the work is so emotionally demand- ing, ...
CHILD ABUSE, COUNSELLING AND APARTHEID: THE WORK OF THE SANCTUARY Counselling TeamG Straker - Free Associations, 1988 In a report by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights it is stated that about 2,000 children under the age of sixteen were detained in South Africa in a four-month period. It states that torture and assault of children in detention was routine (cited in the Star, 21 April 1986). My own ...
Correction: I mistakenly addressed Katie when I meant to write to Jessica on my last post. Sorry for the mistake and any resulting confusion. Doing too much at once, I guess!
Chad,
The fact that I have more sympathy to humans is easily explained by my constant interactions with sick people in my childhood. Numerous hours in the hospital and seeing people who suffered from diseases made me sympathetic to their pain. It is true that it is not always easy to differentiate whether a person is lying or telling the truth, but I try to help if I can.
The second part of my response is my attitude towards animals. Even though my little sister always had some pets at home, I never took care of them. I felt indifferent to them. Maybe this is something that I have to work on…
My personal experiences explain why I feel more sympathy towards people. What about you? Do you have any specific example that made you the way you are now?
Last night I went to Milbank (the place where I worked over the summer and currently volunteer), to find out that group had been canceled. Even though I did not get to spend quality time with the teens, I was able to pow wow with my coworkers. Mava was asking me questions on what she should write about for a proposal paper, and next thing I new she was talking about empathy! I could not believe it. Later we were remembering a teen, George, that we lost just a couple of months ago. I was explaining to them how difficult it was for me to get up and go to the memorial for him. However, something came over me and I got up, got dressed, and headed to the funeral parlor. I was extremely overcome with emotions, and after I explained how upset I was, another coworker of mine, Lance, explained to me that he does not feel like that anymore. He no longer cries when he goes to funerals. Mava then ask, "where do those emotions go?" Mava and Lance, sadly, no longer have empathy in the way that I do/did, but it seems as though attending funerals for beloved youth is normal.
And now for a moment of shameless promotion of my discipline...
This is a quote that came to mind when reading of all of your experiences balancing both the need to feel (empathize, help) and the many ways in which we protect/prevent those feelings.
From George Eliot, of course: "the greatest benefit we owe to the artist, is the expansion of our sympathies." Where things like sermons or statistics can fail us, "a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment."
More BELOVED, less SAW, take 2.
Often when I'm unsure of how to respond to a topic or discussion, I rely on wikipedia to jumpstart my thought process. Here's what I got : "Empathy is the capacity to share the sadness or happiness of another sentient being through consciousness rather than physically. Empathy develops the ability to have compassion towards other beings."
So now I'm wondering, is the ability to understand why someone is feeling the way they are the same as the ability to "share" that feeling?
I have no problem understanding someone's anger or grief or happiness. But sharing those feelings is something else entirely.
Thinking about our reactions to children and the elderly, personally, I am more likely to relate to the 22 year old homeless person than the child or senior. But in any case the chances of me giving away money has more to do when me than with them. If I've had a good day, if I'm in a good mood, if I'm not in a rush. These are the factors that matter over, how old are they, how destitute do they look, etc...
Lastly, I have to say that I completely agree with Joseph's final comment. Our understanding of someone's reasoning, our ability to empathize with them, and our knowledge of the realities of structural violence, in no way excuse or soften a criminal act. There must be some space left for personal responsibility.
I have so much to say, that I would rather stay silent, but if I must.
Last week there was a girl on the train platform pushing a stroller with a small child. I saw her talking to another female, and then she walked towards me. She said " Hello Miss. This is embarrassing and some people are very rude, but I will ask you anyway. I am trying to buy pampers for my son. They cost twenty dollars and so far I have nine. Can you help me in any way?" I was stuck. I didn't know what to think; so many ideas crossed my mind. Is she really going to use this money to buy pampers? Has she really only collected nine dollars? If not to buy pampers, what will she use this money for? Is this even her child? I kept thinking to myself, what if she takes this money and gets high while the kid is with her? What if she kidnapped this baby? Rather than just say yes or no, I began to ask her a few questions. All in a matter of seconds I thought about when I needed help, someone to listen. I have never had to beg for money, but I do know what it is like to need help. She explained as much as she could about her situation before I had to catch my train. I started to pull out a five dollar bill, but because of my uncertainty and lack of funds, I only gave her two instead. Maybe she was lying, maybe she wasn't. I don't know. But, I do know that if she really did need that money for pampers, I wanted to help her, or better yet, the child. What if the fact that I even cared to ask about her life meant more to her than the two dollars?
When I think about empathy, I think about my grandmother, although she doesn't have much empathy for people or animals. She always worked, she raised three kids, and kept a clean home. My grandmother always seems to measure someone else's abilities up to her own. "I rode the train to and from work everyday, what's your problem?" But she doesn't take into account that I am not her. She expects that everyone will have the same will power, drive, access, as she does. We are each different, we each have needs. Chad, I know that you are a smart individual, but not everyone can be as enlightened as you are. I do the same thing sometimes. I have grown so much since being a teenager, yet I condemn my younger cousin for being so naive. But I have to force myself to remember what it was like. And even if we have not been through what someone is experiencing, we should be thankful for that, not critical. I think that empathy is something natural in most of us, and if you cannot feel it, I would suspect that most likely empathy was not shown toward you.
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