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.
Sky
I worry about him being able to contact you.
SK
Superkid,
don’t worry about my exspath trying to contact me.
I’d rather have a heads up, than for him to show up unannounced.
At this point in my life, it is more about me than about him. Everything that makes me vulnerable, IMO, is in me and that’s really what I need to work on.
My knee jerk reaction was to respond with, “what’s the magic number?”, but I know that any knee jerk reaction is wrong, because any contact at all, gives him what he wants: a response. I KNOW it’s best not to respond, but I do need support from everyone here, helping me resist, it’s so tempting.
Thanks for being there for me.
Sky ~ DON’T FEED THE SPATH!!
NC means peace and tranquility. That’s what you want in your life, right? It’s much easier to recuperate and heal from the damage inflicted by that evil creature with peace and quiet.
Be strong, and resist the dark side. We’re here for you (((((Sky)))))
Sky
I totally get it about it being WITHIN YOU.
I let my spath in my life again a few weeks back. Mistake. So I just started ignoring him, finally sent a note saying, “Stop. I am not participating in this any more”.
And today there is another email from him, “you’re in everything I see, every song I hear”. Bullshit.
For a couple hours this morning I was angry. I wanted to print these emails and send them to his wife (he’s been married two months now).
But I’ve calmed down, and that’s what I want to do….calm myself. I want to OWN my REACTIONS. RESPONSE-ABILITY. I have the ability to control my response. And there ain’t going to be one.
SK
Sk, next time don’t read them, just delete them unread! Don’t rent him any more space in your head than you already do. (((hugs)))
Oxy
Yes. You’re right.
I want to get to the point of non reaction. I’ve routed them to my trash bin, and so I hope to get to the point of not dumpster diving.
SK
SK, Good deal, I like that reference to “dumpster diving” because it is just that, really. Only maybe SEWER DIVING because all you are going to come up with is sheet! LOL
I made the BAD mistake of replying to letters and e mails from my egg donor and my Psychopathic son Patrick…and I lived to regret every EVERY *E*V*E*R*Y* one of the ones I answered and mailed to them. I was in such pain emotionally that my answers sounded CRAZY….and they sounded “sane”—I can’t say enough times DO NOT COMMUNICATE WITH THEM and that means don’t READ them either. Don’t look at them on FB, don’t let someone give you news about what they are up to (unless it is a case of ensuring your own SAFETY) and don’t spread information about either them or yourself to ANYone who will talk to them.
Back when no one in our family was writing to the P son in prison, he kept writing and writing others and getting them to CALL and “check on” his grandmother because he hadn’t heard from her….he was spinning trying to get a reaction, and eventually my egg donor caved and sent him money then she caved again and wrote to him….and lied to us about doing so, so that is why she is NC with us because she chose to LIE and send money which puts us at risk….and as long as she chooses that way of doing things none of us will have anything to do with her. I could never trust her though even if she told me she was not sending him money or communicating with him.
DON’T EVER trust a liar….or anyone who is dishonest with you or anyone else. They will do it again.and again. and again>…
((Thanks H2H)),
with everyone’s encouragement, I’ve managed to resist and he hasn’t tried again.
Superkid,
I love your attitude. OWN your responses. Yep. OWNERSHIP IS FOR ADULTS. Spaths are infants that’s why they never OWN UP, they never take responsibility.
Emotional outbursts are what they are hoping for so that they can turn us into their playthings. Nope, ain’t gonna happen.
Hi, I’m new here. But I’m oldhat at this falling for spaths thing. Skylar I applaud you for taking all the money he’ll give you. He DOES indeed owe you plenty. 300 yrs he would owe his LIFE as you probably could have gotten away with killing him. While civilization has made life more comfortable, political-correctness evolving the last 150 yrs has made us into a buncha wussies. And the spaths proliferate. Go us :(.
My friend found this site a few yrs back and I instantly went on it. I knew within 5 minutes of reading it my husband was a spath. KNEW, no doubt. I finally got him to leave (had to be HIS decision) this April 6th. If I do nothing else in my life, it will be enough to have done that. We have 2 small children though so I have to worry about their safety for the next 10 yrs or so. Their father abducting them or having them abducting is a very strong possibility. I would not see them again for decades…no, really. They would be gone, off the radar. What’s so funny is he will admit he doesn’t want them enough to care for them, so it would just be a matter of MY not having them as the reason for taking them. His family would have them. I have to remain friendly with him for this reason. Not just have minimal contact but be friends or tell him maybe someday we can work things out. I don’t feel bad about this becuz he is psychotic and a SPATH. I deal with him outside typical human boundaries. I have to survive and my kids will not killed anymore (in every way but physically). I know he will never give me a dime in support; he won’t work even to feed himself and will continue leeching off ppl. I pray nitely he finds a gf and gets her knocked up so he leaves us alone.
The problem is, I had separated emotionally 3 yrs ago (no way to physically separate) . So when he left, after about 2 months I let a man in town know I was available now and he was on it like a fat kid on candy LOL. This man has been married 2x, takes full responsibility for one failure even. But alas, I have done it AGAIN. Becuz I had known him for several yrs prior, we quickly got serious (nothing to do with sex here, no) and THEN I find out, he’s a loser. I have read and reread this site and really don’t think he’s a spath but he’s very defective and self-admittedly scared to death of getting hurt again (2nd wife tore his heart out & ate it in front of him–my words, not his). He runs. I cease to exist when he’s running. No contact makes me laugh when I read it on here. HE IS the one who practices that :0
I am backing away from him emotionally, not willing to wait for him or work with him for months, I guess. But in the back of my mind, when I get asked out by other men…I don’t think oh I wish so&so was my current-boyfriend, I feel like oh, I’m just not interested in you. Which is bullcrap. So I am self-defeating myself evenso. SIGH
I was married and widowed when I was young. Very very young. I know what love looks like and acts like and says and does. That man was my soulmate. He’s been dead 21 yrs this Labor Day weekend. To keep falling for unable, inept men is making me feel SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO unworthy to call myself a woman. I feel like the village idiot. I am college educated, raised my first children alll alone as a widowed mom. I am very able in so many practical areas. How this current man can mistreat me is mindboggling. Yet…
I know the answer is ME and my psychoses. And I have to change ME. But the being alone again for a decade and a half WHILST raising children again ALONE is just too much.
I feel my sanity slipping away. (I had have no income in months, am on food stamps already & medicaid psychiatric help is like getting a public defender) I have to get a job in the horrific economy (not done with my degree yet even). I HAVE to get some cashflow going tho. I am hoping this community can help me keep it together.
Dear Ain’tgonnatakeitnomore,
Welcome to LoveFraud….your situation sounds like many of us. I too was a widow and when my husband, my soulmate, died I was totally devastated and broken, so lonely and BINGO a psychopath came along and offered to make me feel wonderful! Well, you know how that worked out.
Don’t focus on being “alone” focus on being HEALTHY….focus on being good to yourself. NO ONE else can make us “happy” we have to make ourselves happy and secure and then, and ONLY then, if we meet someone else who is HAPPY AND SECURE in themselves we can SHARE our happiness with them, but we can’t make them happy and they can’t make us happy. HAPPINESS IS A DO-IT-YOURSELF TASK.
Keep on reading, blogging and learning. You can come through this thing and find peace, and calm….and THEN worry about finding another person in your life. You sure do NOT need another psychopath or loser. None of us do. (((hugs))) and God bless.