Comprehending the Whole Person: On Expanding Jaspers' Notion of Empathy (original) (raw)
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Theoretical Medicine & Bioethics, 2015
The centenary of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology was recognised in 2013 with the publication of a volume of essays dedicated to his work (edited by Stanghellini and Fuchs). Leading phenomenological-psychopathologists and philosophers of psychiatry examined Jaspers notion of empathic understanding and his declaration that certain schizophrenic phenomena are ‘un-understandable’. The consensus reached by the authors was that Jaspers operated with a narrow conception of phenomenology and empathy and that schizophrenic phenomena can be understood through what they variously called second-order and radical empathy. This article offers a critical examination of the second-order empathic stance along phenomenological and ethical lines. It asks: (1) Is second-order empathy (phenomenologically) possible? (2) Is the second-order empathic stance an ethically acceptable attitude towards persons diagnosed with schizophrenia? I argue that second-order empathy is an incoherent method that cannot be realised. Further, the attitude promoted by this method is ethically problematic insofar as the emphasis placed on radical otherness disinvests persons diagnosed with schizophrenia from a fair chance to participate in the public construction of their identity and, hence, to redress traditional symbolic injustices.
Spencer, L.J & Broome, M. (2023) The Epistemic Harms of Empathy in Phenomenological Psychopathology
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2023
Jaspers identifies empathic understanding as an essential tool for grasping not the mere psychic content of the condition at hand, but the lived experience of the patient. This method then serves as the basis for the phenomenological investigation into the psychiatric condition known as 'Phenomenological Psychopathology'. In recent years, scholars in the field of phenomenological psychopathology have attempted to refine the concept of empathic understanding for its use in contemporary clinical encounters. Most notably, we have Stanghellini's contribution of 'second-order' empathy and Ratcliffe's 'radical empathy'. Through this paper, we reject the pursuit of a renewed version of 'empathic understanding', on the grounds that the concept is fundamentally epistemically flawed. We argue that 'empathic understanding' risks (1) error, leading to misdiagnosis, mistreatment and an overall misunderstanding of the experience at hand, (2) a unique form of epistemic harm that we call 'epistemic co-opting' and (3) epistemic objectification. To conclude, we propose that empathic understanding ought to be replaced with a phenomenological account of Fricker's virtuous listening.
Phenomenology as a Form of Empathy
Inquiry, 2012
This paper proposes that adopting a ‘phenomenological stance’ enables a distinctive kind of empathy, which is required in order to understand forms of experience that occur in psychiatric illness and elsewhere. For the most part, we interpret other people’s experiences against the backdrop of a shared world. Hence our attempts to appreciate interpersonal differences do not call into question a deeper level of commonality. A phenomenological stance involves suspending our habitual acceptance of that world. It thus allows us to contemplate the possibility of structurally different ways of ‘finding oneself in the world’. Such a stance, I suggest, can be incorporated into an empathetic appreciation of others’ experiences, amounting to what we might call ‘radical empathy’.
Perspective Chapter: A Phenomenological Approach to Empathy
IntechOpen eBooks, 2024
In this chapter, we will seek to determine the role that empathy plays in the relationship between different human beings. In the phenomenological tradition, empathy was often considered the primordial form of relationship with others. According to classical phenomenology, bodily externalizations of inner psychic phenomena play an important role here. In this chapter, we will critically evaluate this approach to empathy. We will argue that empathy presupposes a prior recognition of the other in everyday life. From this perspective, empathy would constitute a second-although fundamental-moment of intersubjective life. The experience of a shared world entails an immediately shared understanding of that world and of those who live in it. Empathy would awaken only when anonymous relationships with other human beings become problematic. In the twentieth century, this concept has been appropriated by psychology on different levels: as a device to analyze how far the lack of empathy may be at the origin of certain pathologies and as a clinical tool that allows the psychologist to gain a deeper insight into the patient's problems. Unfortunately, dialog between the two disciplines around this issue was almost never carried out. This chapter tries to foster the possibilities of such a dialog.
The Special Hermeneutic of Empathy
1999
This paper takes some introductory steps in the direction of sketching the major theme of empathy in Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenologies. A great deal could be written about these subjects. The paper briefly recaps Husserl's position and uses it as an entrée for a presentation of Heidegger's answer in Being and Time. The title of the paper is taken from Heidegger's call for a "special hermeneutic" of empathy which will offset the conscious illusions of separation between human minds and "will have to show how the various possibilities of being of Da-sein themselves mislead and obstruct being-with-one-another and its selfknowledge, so that a genuine "understanding" is suppressed and Da-sein takes refuge in surrogates" (Heidegger, 1996: 117). What this means is a grounding of the empirical practise and theory of psychotherapy, and the human sciences, in an understanding of empathy that is close to the phenomena as they appear after a reduction of previous ontological beliefs and conceptualisations. Other relevant writers are omitted to make a focus specifically on Heidegger's phenomenology and to ascertain what such an approach to empathy might be.
Karl Jaspers 1912 emphasized the role of phenomenology in psychiatry. He described the unique possibilities as well as the limitations he saw in this approach. Jaspers claimed that 'Delusions proper' could not be sufficiently understood in this phenomenological empathetic way, but can only be understood with non-phenomenological methods. Matthew Ratcliffe 2013 questions the boundaries of intelligibility that Jaspers claimed. With his approach of 'radical empathy' he wants to stretch the boundaries of phenomenological understanding of primary delusions. In this essay I first explain Jaspers view on the role of a phenomenological approach in psychiatry and especially its possibilities and limits regarding primary delusions. I then show Ratcliffe's critique on Jaspers claim of the phenomenological unintelligibility of such experiences, and his approach of radical empathy, with which he expands the limits of phenomenological and empathic understanding. I conclude by comparing their views of empathy and and discussing the general intelligibility of others experiences and its consequences.
This paper presents the main contents of Geiger's 1910 lecture on empathy and focuses on its possible infl uence on Jaspers' General Psychopathology. In particular, some key methodological distinctions traced by Jaspers (explaining vs. understanding, static vs. genetic understanding, understandability vs. non-understandability) are compared to Geiger's similar concepts. Geiger's role in shaping Jaspers' concept of understanding (and non-understandability) is still neglected and it is time to recognize it. In particular, Geiger's distinction between the direct empathy for the other's expressions at one side, and the 'reliving after the event' of the 'inner correlation of the psyche' on the other side had a major role in shaping Jaspers' similar distinction between static and genetic understanding.
What empathy is, how it can be defined, how it works, what it is useful to, are currently some of the most pressing questions in several fields: philosophy (especially, but not only, in the philosophy of mind), sociology, psychology, psychopathology, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, just to name a few disciplines. This is due to the fact that in the last years (for twenty years at least) the study of the phenomenon of empathy was believed to be the answer to other more general questions about the issue of intersubjectivity, such as: how do we get to know and understand others? Is our cognition of others perceptual or inferential in nature? Do we get to know and understand others on the analogy of ourselvesand, in this case, is self-understanding prior to any understanding of othersor does the understanding of us and others involve the same primordial cognitive mechanism?
Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy, 2012
In this commentary, we respond to Atwood’s article “Psychology is a Human Science” (see Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy, this issue) by highlighting some of the theoretical ideals that guide Atwood’s writing and his therapy work. In particular, we consider how these case studies fit into the larger paradigm of humanistic psychology, and how this perspective informed Atwood’s work with his clients, providing him with the understanding and empathy that facilitated the therapeutic healing he describes. We also consider the different, but complementary, idea in phenomenological psychiatry of “radical otherness,” which suggests the fundamental impossibility of complete empathy, and how this can be therapeutic, particularly when treating cases of schizophrenia. Finally, we discuss the contributions of phenomenology to the understanding of schizophrenia, and its implications for treatment.