Emotional and Cognitive Empathy.

November 11, 2018

Comp1a-2

Professor Ruesch

Emotional and Cognitive Empathy

        In the Strange Order of Things, Antonio Damasio unveils feelings, the mental agency of homeostasis, play the fundamental role in the generation and advancement of human culture and society, as they “have not been given the credit they deserve as motives, monitors, and negotiations of human cultural endeavors.” Homeostasis is an internal dynamic balance, motivating living being to seek ways to promote well-being and progeny. It isn’t a physical entity or something measurable like one’s blood pressure or heart rate, but more to do with a notion, an indefinable power or driving force existed within all organism stimulating the production of action towards continuity and flourishing. As a special kind of feeling within social animals, empathy, the feeling of what others feel, should serve as the lubricant of social interaction, but also sometimes leads to unexpected unhealthy results. This can be found in “Empathy Exam” by Leslie Jamison, wherein the main character Leslie shares her story about her job as a medical actor, her experiences of abortion and heart surgery. Leslie’s stories prove that homeostasis, though always aiming to optimize life regulations, performs differently depending on the individual, as seen through emotional and cognitive empathy, and can thus have potential, negative outcomes: both motivated by homeostasis, Leslie’s emotional empathy goes into a pathological extreme, while her boyfriend Dave’s cognitive empathy brings positive healthy result.

        Homeostasis is defined as the “powerful, unthoughtful, unspoken” imperative that leads all living beings not only to maintain their survival or current conditions but also seek ways to up-regulate their life (Damasio). Deficient homeostasis is expressed by negative emotions, while the proficient is shown by the positive. Feelings of either pain or pleasure serve as the measure of whether the current living condition or life process conducive or not to our well-being, and the motivator for us to develop methods to tackle with barriers, maintain external stability, and promote flourishing (Damasio). To illustrate, when we are physically injured, we would use ointment and bandage to ameliorate aches and reduce discomfort. It is the feeling of pain (deficient homeostasis) that leads us to compensate our under-balance through the use of homeostasis. However, the homeostatic regulation does not only exist within an individual, but also exerts an impact on a group of people within a community, or even all organisms as a whole. It urges living beings to change their evolutionary strategies or ways of living to ensure their continuity of life and progeny. For example, some animals migrate to a more hospitable environment for better food sources, a certain plant can control their reproduction in face of the shortage of resources, bacteria exhibit cooperative behavior when facing survival problems. In order to optimize life-regulation and possible progeny, human beings also invent various means of subsistence through adopting empathetic and reciprocal altruistic behaviors thus promoting the well-being of the entire human race.

        While empathy serves to optimize life-regulation and possible progeny, interpretations of the emotions behind one’s empathy conflict. Even so, it is evident that empathy helps us offer better care and consolation. It is an ability to understand and feel what another person has experienced, an inborn natural instinct that is wired into the neurobiology of social animals(LYNN E. O'Connor, JACK W. BERRY). It is driven by the homeostatic imperative. Emotional empathy is to feel and understand another person’s experiences, whether sadness from a tragedy or the pleasure derived from a triumph, by attaching to his/her feelings in past similar events or through imagination about what would be like if he/she is actually in this kind of situation. The latter assembles what Jamison has put forth that empathy might be just a hypothetical self-pity projected onto some else. Adams

Smith has confessed, “When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm.” It is plausible to think that our natural response to others’ sufferings originated from what we feel towards ourselves because truly humans are self-oriented creatures. Another explanation for this kind of phenomenon, such as unconsciously having a “painful” face when seeing someone physically injured, is that “it is a result of the activation of neurons in our brain that mimic the same neurons that are activated by a person who is reacting to something” (Halabi). This indicates that there is a genuine biological response that humans experience when another endures pain. This response is empathy.

        While empathy is something that often occurs subconsciously, in the Empathy Exam, Leslie consciously is able to simulate emotional empathy. She does this in order to emotionally connected with her brother, who was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy and had his face paralyzed by acting as if her face too paralyzed. However, her emotional empathy aggravated to an extent that she seems to hurt herself psychologically or emotionally. She said, “I spent large portions of each day—pointless, fruitless spans of time—imaging how I would feel if my face was paralyzed too. I stole my brother’s trauma and projected it onto myself like a magic lantern pattern of light. I obsessed, and told myself this obsession was empathy.” She also once believed that “hurting would make you more alive to the hurting of others.” The harm that comes as a result of this is entirely and consciously self-inflicted. The abnormal or inexplicable thought and the behavior of self-injury are seemingly incompatible by what homeostasis definition suggests—to up-regulate life towards well-being. She hurts herself by continuously sharing the negative emotion of her brother to actually feel better.

        Does that mean that homeostasis has its own limitations and defies application to these kinds of situations? If so, then homeostasis actually leads to Leslie’s self-harm in this context.

In order to resolve Leslie’s feelings of guilt toward her lack of feelings, homeostasis urges her to resolve her emotional imbalance. Leslie tries to experience the feelings of sadness, torture, depression, helplessness, or desperation as his brother might die. Her obsession with empathizing with others, and even herself doesn’t believe that she was merely sharing the emotion, but rather, “stealing” the emotions. Leslie’s behavior, though strange, still follows the principle and guidance of the equilibrium in her internal milieu. In the text, Jamison seems to suffer a conversion disorder. She had a hard time feeling something that she thought supposed to feel and also in expressing her complicated emotions. She didn't sure about the feelings she had were real or “made-up”, whether they derived from physical pain or their mind. The realization of her own numbness, lack of mood swings in particular situation that supposed to be there, and the feeling of guiltiness for not responding her brother’s condition as empathetically as she could drive her to search for a way that could make up the deficiency in the heart. Homeostasis does play a role and serve as the catalyst for the action, rather than guidance. Each individual acts differently and adapt diverse means to solve the problems. Homeostasis drives her to search for compensation methods, for which she immersed in the imagination of being paralyzed. Jamison chooses her own way to make up the internal imbalance, and she actually felt good about it, even if it is an unhealthy solution.

        Homeostasis stimulates the production of action, encouraging people to seek compensation for the imbalance in the internal milieu, but it does not tell people what is the best way to tackle the problems they have. It is people themselves who seek their own ways out. Jamison could have used other means to balance her homeostasis. Why doesn’t she want her life better? Because every individual has a different background, experiences, education, scope, resources, and environment, the way that one deems best works for him/her may be totally different from the others. In Jamison’s case, the method she adopted only works in short-run and creates an illusion of feeling good and in a state of homeostatic. Besides from what is the best means to up-regulate life, the