Empathy
Empathy: Could It Be What You’re Missing? – washingtonpost.com
Based on my 35 years of experience as a psychotherapist, business psychologist and researcher, I have come to believe that EDD [Empathy Deficit Disorder] is a pervasive but overlooked condition with profound consequences for the mental health of individuals and of our society. People who suffer from EDD are unable to step outside themselves and tune in to what other people experience. That makes it a source of personal conflicts, of communication failure in intimate relationships, and of the adversarial attitudes — even hatred — among groups of people who differ in their beliefs, traditions or ways of life.
What’s the difference between this and sociopathy? (Anti-social personality disorder, if you will.) I guess it’s all just a matter of degree. Like any other kind of human behavior, there’s a continuum between what’s considered normal and what, on either end of scale, would be a mental illness. I suppose EDD is on the “empathy scale” somewhere between normal and criminal psychopathology.
This is a really fascinating topic. I’m reminded of Roger Shattuck’s discussion of the writings of Marquis de Sade in his great book Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus To Pornography
Posted by RebeccaHartong on December 26, 2007 under Psychology
This is a very interesting topic. The difference is if you act on your impulses or not. Empathy disorder, another politically correct word designed to make people feel “not so bad” about their imperfections. EDD is sociopathy, plain and simple. As my daughter says, you can sprinkle diamonds on a pile of excretement, but alas, its still a pile of s**t, errr, excretement.