Reviewed by Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
Simon Baron-Cohen, author of The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, is a professor of Developmental Psychology in the department of Experimental psychology and psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. He is director of the University’s Autism Research Center and has endless awards for his research and writing.
If you only read one book about empathy, this book should be it! Baron-Cohen explores the definition of empathy, or the lack of it, in humans, to answer his own questions about the Nazi atrocities in Germany before and during World War II. He also, as a scientist, wanted to explore why some people treat other as objects and answer his questions about how a human being can treat another person with utter cruelty and lack of compassion. His definition of empathy is:
Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion.
Empathy … requires not only that you can identify another person’s feelings and thoughts, but that you respond to those with an appropriate emotion.
He explains that lack of empathy can be a fleeting state, in which anger, drugs, alcohol, or distractions dampen our empathy temporarily, or it can be a life-long pattern from which there is no recovery. He goes on to show that there are medical conditions in which both parts of empathy are missing (recognition of another’s feelings as well as responding to those feelings.)
Like any good scientist who studies his subject in a scientific manner, Baron-Cohen actually measures empathy. He and his team devised a Empathy Quotient (EQ) in order to measure empathy on the standard bell curve, where the majority of humans are in the middle. Most people have a reasonable amount of empathy most of the time (both recognizing and responding to the feelings of others), with fewer people having a much greater amount of empathy, and others having a lesser amount of empathy.
When I meet someone with very little empathy, it is as if they lack the very apparatus to look inwards at themselves, as if they lack a reverse periscope that would enable them any vision of themselves.
He defines, for research purposes, empathy into six broad categories. He describes zero empathy as:
Individual has no empathy at all ”¦ at which level some people commit crimes and are violent, but ”¦ fortunately, not all people with zero empathy wish to harm others ”¦ they cannot experience remorse or guilt.
At level six are the hyper-empathetic people that he describes as:
Continually focused on other people’s feelings, and go out of their way to check on these and to be supportive. It is as if their empathy is in a constant state of hyper-arousal, such that other people are never off their radar.
Using both psychology and brain scans of the areas of the brain involved in empathy, Baron-Cohen explains how the various personality disorders, psychopathy he uses that word borderline and narcissism, overlap in empathy or lack of it. Other medical conditions, such as autism, also cause problems with empathy.
He shows that people with classic autism, while not having empathy, do not generally intend to cause harm to anyone. The book also explores the genetic links. as well as the environmental links. that can produce low or lacking empathy in a personality.
Appendix 1 is the Empathy Quotient self test. Appendix 2 is How to Spot Zero Degrees of Empathy (Negative). It discusses borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality, a young person with conduct disorder, and How to Recognize a Narcissist.
This is an excellent book for learning more about ourselves, as well as learning about people with low levels of empathy. I highly recommend this book for both scientific information and for common sense information that is useful day to day in dealing with others in our lives.
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, on Amazon.com.
Dear hurtnomore,
Well I am sorry that you missed your summer at the girl scout camp, my son works at a boy scout camp every summer since he was a kid, it is hard work but fun too. I hope you can do it next summer.
I know it must be frustrating to have that woman do you that way, but keep on working toward your financial independence and spend as little time with him as humanly possible. He may think he has a right to treat you poorly and order you around, but he does NOT have that right.
When you are able you can keep away from him completely. No one can make you talk to him or listen to him if you don’t want to. He obviously thinks that he can force you to “obey” him, but you are not obligated by man or God to allow yourself to be abused or to associate with someone you don’t want to just because you are related by blood. I have nothing to do with my “egg donor” (mother) and saw the last of my “sperm donor” when I was 19, I never spoke to him again as long as he lived (40+ years) he told people lies about me, bad mouthed me to everyone who would listen, but those people who knew me and loved me did not believe a word he said. So keep your chin up and keep studying hard in school, you are on your way!
Stop by and visit more often here at LF! (((hugs)))
I just wanted to come here and say ‘thank you’ to all of you who responded to me earlier. I have had a really bad day today. I have been working sort of too much and am tired. I have been tired the past two days.
You will all be happy to know I did NOT break NC. I chose to bury myself, instead, in busy work needing to be done. The whole time, I was shouting and yelling at him and telling him what a jerk he truly is. You are right, Constantine: positive or negative attention, it’s all the same to them. They find it humorous.
Love you all for your support.
Talk soon – I just need to clam up to myself for a while…
I can’t eat from 1pm tomorrow, for 24 hrs. I can have NOTHING except for water. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Hmm? xxoo
Dupey Doo
DUPED NO MORE:
Sorry to hear you had a bad day.
So glad to hear you did NOT break NC.
Hugs to you x
Dupey – Have that water on the rocks ~! Tomorrow will be a better day….:)
Dupey, sounds like a medical prep—sorry about that! That’s enough to make anyone have a bad day!
A poster here when I came here 4 years ago (gosh it has been a long time!) named Aloha and I used to talk about how we drove down the highways and SCREAMED at the P’s like they were in the car with us, telling them everything in the world we wanted to tell them at FULL VOLUME….pounding on the steering wheel! I used to write letters to them and NOT MAIL THEM….when I DID (at first) mail them they were used against me later…they sounded crazy, believe me I WAS crazy…but the Ps have a way of making the victim appear crazy while they are calm and collected.
Even my new therapist thought I was a NUT JOB and I was a paranoid nut job at that…..he asked nicely, but I had to take in a witness to prove that “everyone in my family IS OUT TO GET ME!” The lawyer I hired to fight my son’s parole I hired by telephone and he didn’t believe me either until I sent him the documentation.
It is all “crazeeeee” and we get these ideas to do things like BREAK NC, but it is not okay to break NC except when in a court or in case of a custody/co-parent thing….so stiff upper lip my dear and drink lots of water on the rocks like Henry said! (((hugs))))
Dear Dupey,
No, I don’t think you should call this a bad day at all! You were tempted to call him and DIDN’T, so I believe that you need to classify this as a most undeniably GOOD day! In the final analysis, it’s the little “smart but tough” decisions that make the will strong. So if you keep going in this direction (i.e., where more wise/difficult decisions = an overall increase in will-power), before long it will be impossible for you to even THINK of calling him. So GOOD JOB, that’s what I say!
Yes, there is no other way of seeing this except as a victory. Whoever said that breaking an addiciton was easy?
Good for you, Dupey, you did the right thing! (Now go and have a nice rest, and recuperate from your triumph!)
Love,
C.
.
oxy, joyce- fascinating premise! I really want to read this book now. The point about autistics not having empathy yet still not being motivated to hurt anyone is very enlightening, i think.
Free will, anyone?
Yes, I have medical tests everyday this next week. I am SICK of being prodded and pulled upon! I think I have endured ENOUGH already! One good thing about having this all done at once, all at the same time, by the time I get all the reports and results, it should be over with for another 3 months! yay! 🙂
In 3 months, we get to talk about further heart surgery again. And that piece of garbage had the audacity to call itself MY FRIEND?! With friends like that, who needs enemies. Right?
One thing I have noticed about evil people, it may not ‘seem’ like they are getting what they deserve but they are, if you really stop and think about it…THEY are the ones living their pointless lives and the whole time they are breathing, there is that quality and human-ness that they lack and don’t know how to ‘get it’ – they can’t take our souls and that is really what they want and despise. I think that is what makes them so despicable = they want to suck our souls out when they realize they can’t have the things we do inside.
NOBODY could ever possibly conceive how desperately I wanted to RUIN HIS SMUG LITTLE DAY yesterday! I hadn’t slept well for a couple days by the time I got to yesterday, so I was especially grouchy and out of sorts – Maybe it was the for no reason, all of a sudden, SOB SESSION I had all day, a couple days ago, for no reason, that infuriates me so!
WHO IS THIS PERSON THAT I SHOULD FEEL ALL OF THIS?
This person is nobody to me. You know, I told “IT” the last time I saw “IT”, “I don’t even know you anymore. I don’t even recognize you anymore. You are someone I don’t know anymore.” And it’s true. That is how drastic the change was.
There is NO CONCEIVABLE WAY I am going to live with an insane person who purposely tried to harm me and laughed about it. Does “IT” really think I am so stupid that I will fall right back into all of that after it and the OW tried to purposely harm me? I don’t think so. Oh yes, NC is exactly the thing.
You are right, Constantine, it’s an addiction. I had a habit, once upon a time, while hanging out in all the ‘fun places’, 2 fifths of Black Velvet a day, straight-up, on the rocks, please, DAILY. I kicked it the next morning after the most horrid hangover I have ever encountered! ahahaha “Instant cure!” 🙂 THIS IS NO WHERE NEAR AS EASY and most people would think the booze would be harder. 😉 Some nasty and rude chemicals at work inside our bodies that needs to calm down. I keep telling myself: “The fire only hurts walking through it; once you get to the other side you will find peace.” While pounding myself on my shoulders, simultaneously, with my fists! You know how Tarzan used to pound his chest? That released adrenalin which is a natural healer within us. I have pounded on that adrenalin gland on my chest, so hard, once, I gave myself a nasty bruise! hahahaha (One must remember to be careful with their tapping!) hahahaha
Anyways, “thank you” with HUGE HUGS to all of you who responded to my ‘help alert’ yesterday. I have never encountered such a thing in my life! How you can be, one moment, offering unconditional friendship and concern and the next, they are literally trying to kill you. Unbelievable. And that’s just it, though; huh?
A slow release time bomb and they are hoping we self destruct in the process, through our minds. THAT is how you KNOW you have been touched by a psychopath because it’s all about the ‘lasting’ harm they do to us. They truly do find it amusing. They really do. Every foul, ugly thing that happens to you, they so delight in.
HA: FREE WILL. Why, yes, thanks, dancingnancies, I will have a double order, please?
Today is another day, hens – let’s see what this one brings. 🙂 3 months 6 days = not a peep from Dupey!!!! I am going to call up the Marine Band and have a parade when I reach one year. 🙂
Thank you all for being my shoulder –
You all take a pretty good ‘lean’……..
xxoo
Dupity Doo Duh
I was at an outdoor event last night with 150,000 other human beings. It was site to behold.
There was a couple that was near us, a handsome guy and a pretty girl, and it was so interesting to watch him. He hugged his girlfriend, he laughed, he showed empathy and emotion, he was a normal, kind guy. I watched with amazement, thinking “this is what normal is” This is it.
My guy is sooo disordered. He put on this physical show of being apparently BURSTING of emotion and love for me….then he’d disappear for a month, only sending emails…..then come back with the second act, same as the first….
No wonder I was confused, no wonder I hurt from it all.
I’m going back to read the PSYCHOPATH TEST today. It’s a really fun read. I like looking at things through the eyes of somebody else.
I wish I had done a better job listening to my spath. If I had REALLY LISTENED I might have figured things out faster.
Psychology Today online has some tips about being a better listener that I’m going to go read too.
Enjoy your Sunday.
SK