The word "empathy" is getting interesting play these days. At times it even sounds like a pejorative. President Obama used the word frequently while campaigning and since being in office. In the context of choosing a Supreme Court nominee, he said that ideally such a person should understand Americans' problems and have empathy for their fellow beings. But he's also talked about empathy (in Atlanta in Jan 09) in the context of its absence: "We have an empathy deficit when we're still sending our children down corridors of shame--schools in forgotten corners of America where the color of your skin still affects the content of your education . . . when there is Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others . . . when homeless veterans sleep on the streets . . ."
Most dictionaries will define empathy as "the intellectual identification with or the vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another." Yet, for some, like Senator Orrin Hatch, President Obama's saying "empathy" when talking about judicial appointments is seen as a "code" for appointing a left leaning liberal. Instead of being seen as an admirable quality that describes someone with a visceral understanding of the human condition and especially of human suffering, it is seen as a bias.
To be fair, it could be that Republicans reflexively and correctly see the President's use of "empathy" as being empathy not for all people, but for some people, or even (in their view) the wrong people: for mothers instead of the unborn, for unions instead of big business, for the homeless and unemployed rather than for the well-off or even for the middle-class tax payer.
It did not help that Judge Sotomayor once said in a speech, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than the white male who hasn't lived that life." This would seem reasonable, but only if the issue at hand involved Latina women. What if the issue had to do with white men with un-rich experiences? One sees the slippery slope she is on.
As someone not in the legal field, it seems to me that if the law were absolutely cut and dry, and if the process of being a judge meant simply following algorithms, being impartial, ensuring that justice was done and procedure followed, then empathy would be irrelevant. But since judges always seem to be writing 'opinions' and disagreeing with each other, clearly, there is a human factor at work. In that case, broad empathy, a Shakespearean breadth of interest in all people, in the wise and the foolish, in the misanthrope and the saint, in politicians and the public who suffer them would surely be a good thing.
Fortunately, in medicine the word empathy is less ambiguous. Indeed it is considered desirable. I have always felt that new medical students come to medical school with tremendous empathy, with a wonderful ability to imagine the suffering of the patient. What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it-- the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
We can actually measure empathy by something called the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (with 20 items on a Likert scale). In at least one study, female physicians scored higher than their male counterparts (though it did not reach statistical significance), and psychiatrists did better than physicians in surgical fields, while there was no difference among internists, psychiatrists and emergency medicine physicians. An intriguing question is whether each specialty creates a change in degree of empathy, or does one select a specialty based on one's inherent empathy or lack thereof.
We may debate the role of empathy in a judge, but patients have little doubt about what they want in a physician: Anatole Broyard, in a poignant account (Intoxicated By My Illness) of his cancer writes: "To the typical physician, my illness is a routine incident in his rounds, while for me it's the crisis . . . " Broyard wants a physician who will "give me his whole mind just once, be bonded with me for a brief space, survey my soul as well as my flesh, to get at my illness, for each man is ill in his own way."
I can't think of a better definition of empathy.
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Abraham Verghese
The phenomenology of "empathy" was a concept of interest to philosophers in the early 20th century. Edith Stein, fellow student of Heidegger and favorite student of Husserl, wrote her dissertation on "The Problem of Empathy" (1916). She subsequently converted to Catholicism, took the veil as a Carmelite nun, died in Auschwitz, and is now revered as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Heidegger may have been influenced both by Stein and by the physician Viktor Emil von Gebsattel, whom he encountered in the course of treatment for a nervous breakdown. Gebsattel was preoccupied with the role of empathic connection between physician and patient, quoting in one article the hearfelt cry of one under his care: "Is it the physician whom I am talking to or is it my fellow man?"
The problem of balancing empathy (by whatever name) and what Osler termed medical "aequanimitas" abides.
I think the comparison you make between Doctors and Judges is valid, but not when discussing personal physicians and Supreme Court Judges. As a 1st year medical student, I can tell you that at least in my program (LSU - New Orleans), we are repeatedly reminded to be empathetic. Indeed, I would hope that in, for example, divorce court or criminal court the judge would have the ability to empathize, to identify with both the plaintiff and the defendant. However, when you get to the level of the Supreme Court, you are no longer ruling in favor of one person and against another. You are setting precedents that will affect an untold number of people. There is no way to empathize with these people of the future. That is the reason that Obama's desire of a judge with the ability to empathize worried me: that isn't the role of a Supreme Court Justice. To further your analogy, I would not want the Surgeon General to empathize with a failing CEO of a tobacco company (as an extreme analogy) and allow the removal of smoking warnings from cigarette packs. I do want empathy from the ER Physician when I come in with a broken leg, etc.
A better example than the Surgeon General would be the Transplant Comittee of a hospital: I want them to consider cases dispassionately, not with the emotion which is inherent to empathy and inherently biased.
as a former lawyer and 2nd Circuit clerk, I would say empathy in the legal context is more about identifying a problem.
I can think of a couple of cases that would have turned out differently if I hadn't worked on the case, because I spotted things the parties and judges didn't: I didn't twist the law, I just saw something that was already in the law but that somebody who was in a hurry and had a different background might not have thought to look for. I think I was very scrupulous, and it looks like Judge Sotomayor is as well (perhaps to a fault).
More important virtues may be her time as a district court judge (none of the sitting Justices have been trial court judges), and advising business clients. Knowing how things actually work just means you're going to raise some questions BEFORE they're problem, not after. That also is a matter of empathy.
Also, you invoked the zebras/horses comparison a few days ago:
Well, some doctors I've worked with look too hard for zebras, and others miss almost every zebra and prescribe Xanax or something to anybody who's describing symptoms they can't explain. (I'm talking cases in which the initial caution was subsequently proven wrong; I'm working in cardiology so occasionally the consequences are not trivial.).
In law, perhaps it is more a matter of saying: is this really a zebra? Or just an ordinary horse you hadn't paid much attention to before? And when the woman on the other side of the room says, hey, I think I've seen a horse like this before, do you shut her down, or listen?
In any complicated field of endeavor, some people will notice some things, and other will notice others. It is helpful in complicated cases to have a variety of perspectives in the room because it increases the chances that someone will throw out an idea that the others hadn't yet considered. THAT is the value of diversity.
Feel bad for Ricci, and it was probably a close case, but if anything it was the people who decided for him who over-relied on their empathy for him.
as long as justice is administered by human beings there will be human factors at work in its administration - empathy, sympathy, indifference, etc. every judge, lawyer, and police officer has their bias and their background and they cannot be divorced from those things, that is who they are. you hit the nail on the head when you note that GOP objection is not to the existence of sotomayor's humanity (that would be ridiculous!), but to its supposed orientation - towards minorities, towards the poor.
though we in medicine are moving in what i think is a better direction, a lot of times this idea of "being able to leave your beliefs at the door" is held up as the objective ideal for us as well. but doctors are humans, and medicine is a human practice, and learning how to understand and embrace our biases and beliefs i believe is the only honest path forward.
For those of us in medical education, the question also arises how, or whether, empathy can be taught.
Some believe that, once a student arrives in medical school or as a resident, it's too late to improve him, or that our system of medical training destroys empathy rather than supports empathy. Personally, I think some people by personality naturally feel the pain of others (call them "empaths"), but for most, the example of senior faculty helps. A great debate also exists about the role of literature in fostering empathy: Martha Nussbaum (literature makes us better, more compassionate) vs. Stanley Fish (while this view employs a lot of literature professors, Nazi officers also read Rilke).