Lack Of Empathy Means Nothing

Why is it so overvalued in diagnostics?

Time for nightime monologuing…

Lack of empathy. It’s the tell-tale sign of psychopathy… or is that narcissism… or borderline personality disorder…or histrionic personality disorder… or sociopathy…or autism?

Are you seeing the pattern yet? All of these different things have been described with a “lack of empathy”, but in reality, of course they do. We have discussed what empathy truly is, and that is assumption. It has nothing to do with feeling what other people are feeling, it is a relation to another person based on what your own experience would be in a similar situation. You see someone lose a loved one, you understand that loss, you feel bad for them. You offer to them the comfort that you would feel reassured if it were offered to you.

People think that when I say that empathy is not the end-all-be-all thing that defines humans, that means that I see no value in it whatsoever. That’s not true, I do understand is role in social cohesion and interpersonal relationships. However, because people live around others that are so like them, and the assumptions often are correct, that you feel terrible that your loved one died, and other people also feeling that is how they would experience that loss feels bad for you, they take it for granted and make it into something that it isn’t, which is a universal language.

Empathy only works for people and things you can understand. Now, granted, you can be made to understand things that you do not have personal experience with. You may not have ever been on the brink of starvation, but you have probably gone for longer than normal without food a time or two in your life, plus you can read and see the effects of starvation, so while you cannot fully empathize with that situation, you can draw conclusions about it and not want to experience it. You can also have certain emotions toward those that do.

Why I am on here tonight criticizing the use of “lack of empathy” in diagnostics?