The Use of Empathy in the Resolution of Grief

THE USE OF EMPATHY IN THE RESOLUTION OF GRIEF* NORMAN L. PAUL, M.D.f Rage, terror, profound sadness, helplessness, acute loneliness, and despondencyareamong thosefeelings thatbothchildrenandadultsfind most difficult to bear; all are associated with the state ofgrief. Through the expression ofgrief and empathie responses among family members, each member can be freed from these painful feelings for the pursuit ofmore constructive and satisfying activities. This paper explains the crucial role ofempathy in the resolution ofgrief. One difficulty in describing empathy, its sources, and induction lies in the limitations oflanguage. George Engel, in his attempts to develop an adequate classification ofthe phenomenology ofaffects, or raw feelings, readily acknowledged the inadequacy of language: "We still recognize not only that in nature affects do not exist in pure, unalloyed form but also that to deal with affects in written, verbal, or conceptual terms is fundamentally inconsistent with their nature and can succeed only at the expense oftheir oversimplification and impoverishment" i. Despite the constrictions with which language hems us in, we must persist in the explorationandassessment ofempathy because ofits importance in human experience. Empathy Empathy is an interpersonal phenomenon that occurs when the empathizer , or subject, recognizes thathe shareskindred feelings with another person, the object. When empathy is reciprocated, it may be regarded as love. Olden defines empathy as "the capacity ofthe subject instinctively and intuitively to feel as the object does. It is a process ofthe ego, more * Presented as part ofthe Edward A. Strecker Award in Philadelphia, October 21, 1966. t Assistant Clinical Professor ofPsychiatry, Tufts Medical School, Boston, Mass. !S3 specifically, an emotional ego expression . . . the subject temporarily gives up his own ego for that ofthe object" 2. It is imperative to make a clear distinction between empathy and sympathy . Although these terms are often used interchangeably, they describe diffèrent and mutually exclusive kinds of interpersonal experience. The two words share a common measure of meaning; both express a preoccupation with the assumed affinity between a subject's own feelings and the feelings ofthe other person. ("Object" and "other" are both used in this paper to designate the recipient ofsympathy or empathy.) In sympathy , however, the subject is principally absorbed in his own feelings as projected into the object and has Uttle concern for the reality and validity of the object's special experience. Sympathy, then, bypasses real understanding ofthe other person; he becomes the subject's mirror image and is thus denied his own sense ofbeing. Empathy, on the other hand, presupposes the existence ofthe other as a separate individual, entitled to his own feelings, ideas, and emotional history . The empathizer makes no judgments about what the other should feel but solicits the expression ofwhatever feelings may exist and, for brief periods, feels them as his own. The empathizer oscillates between such subjective involvement and a detached recognition ofthe shared feelings. The periods ofhis objective detachment do not seem to the other to be spellsofindifference, astheywouldinsympathy; instead, theyareevidence that the subject respects himself and the object as separate people. The empathizer, secure in his sense ofselfand his own emotional boundaries, attempts to nourish a similar security in the other. The empathie relationship is generous; the empathizer does not use the object as a means for gratifying his ownsense ofimportance but ishimselfprincipallyconcerned with encouraging the other to sustain and express his feelings and fantasies as being appropriate to himself. The empathizer thus makes clear the other's individuaUty and his right to this individuaHty without apology, therebyavoiding theinduction ofguiltin theobject, acommoningredient of sympathetic interactions. Such guilt induction is associated with the development ofa hostile-dependent relationship that binds the object to the sympathizer and vice versa. There are two kinds of empathy, intellectual and affective, both of which may exist simultaneously in the same person. Intellectual empathy describes a reciprocal process where each oftwo (or more) persons identi154 Norman L. Paul · Resolution ofGrief Perspectives in Biology and Meditine · Autumn 1967 fies with the other in terms ofthe other's verbalized thoughts, incorporating them as his own for the moment. This process seeks to understand the other's thoughts, as spoken, and the sources ofthose thoughts, in short, to meet the intellectual needs of the other. Two types of intellectual...