We have seen that affective resonance with others—empathy—was one of the factors that, combined with valuing the other and concern for the other’s fate, would engender altruistic attitude and behavior. But it is also possible that empathy could be lacking. The causes for such a shortfall and its effects are many. In some cases, lack of empathy is caused by an emotional erosion linked to external situations of increased tension, which results in professional fatigue, or burnout, especially among doctors and nurses. In other cases, that of psychopaths, a complete lack of empathy and of caring feelings manifests from childhood. Linked to genetic heritage, this lack is associated with dysfunctions of certain regions of the brain. In all cases, these defects produce major negative effects in people who suffer from them, and in everyone those people affect, because their cold insensitivity leads them to harm others and sometimes even to commit atrocities.
Medical personnel are confronted daily with the suffering of others. When they experience empathy, they suffer from their patients’ suffering. This suffering set off by empathy is real, and studies in neuroscience have shown that regions of the brain for pain or distress are activated.1 What will the consequences be in the long run? The sufferings of a patient will not always last. In the best case, the patient gets better, and in the worst case, dies. Fortunately, it is very rare for patients to suffer intensely for years. Patients come and go, but the burden of empathic suffering of the medical staff is renewed day after day. In many cases, the doctor or nurse will end up suffering from burnout. Their capacity for resilience when repeatedly faced with the sufferings of others becomes exhausted. They can no longer bear this situation. Those who suffer from this type of exhaustion are generally forced to discontinue their practice.
One study has shown that in the United States, 60% of practicing doctors have reported symptoms of burnout, including emotional exhaustion and feelings of powerlessness and ineffectiveness, even uselessness. Those who are subject to burnout also tend to depersonalize the patients: the patients are then treated less well, and the frequency of medical errors increases.2
Some doctors adopt a strategy. They say to themselves, “In order to take care of my patients, I must avoid reacting emotionally to their suffering.” They understand that excessive sensitivity and emotional reactions can affect the quality of care or disturb a surgeon who needs all his calm to carry out perfectly precise actions and make difficult decisions. But creating a distance and establishing an emotional barrier between oneself and the patient is likely not the best way to approach the patient’s suffering. Such an attitude can quickly degenerate into cold indifference.
On the other hand, a large number of nurses and doctors evince great human warmth, which is a source of powerful comfort for the sick person. It turns out that people who are thus naturally gifted with kindness and compassion are less often affected by empathic exhaustion. Isn’t it the ability to feel and show kindness that makes the difference? One of the essential factors of burnout could be the progressive fatigue of empathy when it is not regenerated or transformed by altruistic love.
People sometimes talk about compassion fatigue. It would probably be more appropriate to talk about empathy fatigue, as we have seen in chapter 4. Empathy is limited to an affective resonance with the one who is suffering. Having accumulated, it can easily end up in exhaustion and distress. But altruistic love is a constructive state of mind that helps both the one who feels it and the one who benefits from it. Cultivating altruistic love and kindness, therefore, can remedy the difficulties posed by burnout.
A friend of mine, Dr. David Shlim, who has long lived in Nepal and practiced meditation for years, has, since the year 2000, organized seminars in the United States that gather together about a hundred doctors who want to feature compassion more in their practices.3 During these seminars, doctors have noticed that despite the fact that kindness and compassion are integral parts of the ideal of medicine, the Hippocratic oath, and the medical code of ethics, the curriculum at medical schools did not even mention the word compassion, let alone methods to cultivate it. A doctor present at the seminar remarked, “I think I’ve never heard the words medicine and compassion in the same sentence in all my time at medical school.” Medical students and young doctors who begin to practice in hospitals are the ones most often tested by unforgiving schedules that can require twenty-four hours’ uninterrupted presence with patients. This “training” is so exhausting that, according to the doctors themselves, it leaves hardly any room for compassion.
David confided to me that as a young doctor he sometimes was on call for thirty-six hours in a row. One day, at four o’clock in the morning, he had just dozed off in the staff room when he was awakened by the intercom: a patient, his seventh that night, had just been admitted to the emergency room. As he dragged himself there like a boxer half-stunned by his opponent, he was surprised to catch himself thinking that if the sick person died before he arrived, he could go back to sleep instead of spending the next few hours taking care of her. David had not lost his compassion, but he no longer had enough energy to put it into practice.
For many interns in training, exhaustion causes irritability, resentment, and bitterness rather than kindness, compassion, and empathy. Medical students are selected more for their ability than for their desire to help others. Without offering these young doctors some appropriate training for kindness, how can we expect them to show readiness and compassion, when, in the circumstances they must face, would constitute a challenge even for those who have cultivated these qualities for years? As Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in America, writes: “Every doctor knows what it takes to become technically competent: learn more about scientific advances and the latest successful drugs and procedures. How many physicians, however, have any sense of how to become more compassionate?”4
In his preface to Medicine and Compassion, David Shlim writes, “Training in compassion, however, does require some effort. Most people agree that doctors are more skillful at treating people after twenty years of practice than they are when they first start out. Like the study of medicine itself, the cultivation of compassion can become a lifelong pursuit, with continued improvement throughout.”5
All over the world there are countless doctors, nurses, and nurse’s aides who tirelessly devote themselves to the well-being of others with admirable devotion. But in order to reduce the burnout that affects health professionals, and not dehumanize a profession whose very essence is humanity, it would be useful to offer medical practitioners ways to develop the inner qualities they need in order to help others better. If health care professionals had the possibility to cultivate compassion and introduce it to the very heart of current practices at hospitals, patients would feel better taken care of and doctors and nurses would draw more satisfaction and emotional equilibrium from it. Further, by granting more importance to compassion, the people who administer or reform health systems would be inclined to stress the way patients are treated rather than only the reduction of costs and of the time spent with each patient.
The phenomenon of burnout not only affects the people who take care of the suffering. It is a vaster syndrome that afflicts people in all lines of work. The psychologist Christina Maslach, a professor at the University of Berkeley in California, has devoted herself to studying the causes and symptoms of burnout. She defines it as a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, which results from an accumulation of stress linked to difficult human interactions during our daily activities.6 She identifies three main consequences of burnout: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a feeling of ineffectiveness.
Emotional exhaustion is the feeling of being “worn out,” “at the end of one’s tether,” of no longer having the necessary energy or pleasure in oneself to face the next day. Those who find themselves in that case cut down on their relationships with others. Even if they continue to work, they withdraw behind professionalism and bureaucracy to manage their social relationships in a purely formal way, devoid of any personal or emotional involvement. They set up an emotional barrier between themselves and others. A New York policeman confided to Christina Maslach, “You change when you become a cop—you become tough and hard and cynical. You have to condition yourself to be that way in order to survive this job. And sometimes, without realizing it, you act that way all the time, even with your wife and kids. But it’s something you have to do, because if you start getting emotionally involved with what happens at work, you’ll wind up in Bellevue.”7
The second major symptom of burnout is cynicism and insensitivity to those one encounters professionally. One depersonalizes them and regards them with a cold, distant attitude, and one avoids engaging in overly personal relations with them. One even gives up one’s ideals. One social worker confided to Maslach, “I began to despise everyone and could not conceal my contempt,” while another reports, “I find myself caring less and possessing an extremely negative attitude. I just don’t give a damn anymore.” Yet another even wanted other people to “get out of my life and just leave me alone.”
These symptoms are also accompanied by a feeling of guilt, with health care professionals feeling distress at the thought that they aren’t taking care of their patients as they should, and that they’re becoming cold and insensitive.
The third aspect of burnout manifests in the form of a loss of feeling of personal accomplishment and self-realization, which causes a feeling of failure. Loss of self-confidence and any sense of the value of what one has accomplished leads to profound discouragement and, often, depression, loss of sleep, chronic fatigue, headaches, gastrointestinal disorders, and high blood pressure. A study carried out in the countries of the European Union showed that 50% to 60% of all work days lost are linked more or less directly to stress.8
Most people suffering from burnout underestimate the influence of their environment and overestimate their share of personal responsibility.9
The feeling of powerlessness and frustration can in particular affect social workers and members of other professions who know what they could do but cannot do it. Eve Ekman, daughter of the psychologist Paul Ekman, takes care of homeless people in San Francisco needing urgent medical or psychological assistance. She told me that the most difficult part of her work, in addition to the strong emotional charge linked to the state of the patients themselves, was the feeling of powerlessness in remedying the roots of the problem: the municipality didn’t provide a budget anymore, the shelters were closed, and, once the immediate emergency was taken care of, she had no other choice but to put the poor people back on the street, knowing full well they would soon face new difficulties. “I can’t take them home with me; I can’t do anything else, and I feel as if what I’m doing is pointless and meaningless. Discouragement can unfortunately lead to depersonalizing the poor and rejecting them.” Eve concludes, “So it is important to prepare yourself for such tasks and to maintain full awareness of your inner state so as not to succumb to burnout.”
Research shows that men and women are equally vulnerable to burnout.10 Some minor differences have been observed, though: women are more vulnerable to emotional exhaustion, while men have a tendency to depersonalize the people they work with and to seem disdainfully cold to them. That might be due in part to the fact that women work more often than men in the care profession (nurses, social workers, psychological counselors), while men form the majority among doctors, psychiatrists, police officers, and service professionals. Nonetheless, in light of her studies, Christina Maslach thinks that this is not enough to explain the differences observed, and that the differences are linked more to differences of temperament between the two sexes.
Moreover, in the United States, Asian immigrants suffer as much from burnout as the white population, but black and Hispanic immigrants are clearly less affected.11 The latter are much less subject to emotional exhaustion or depersonalization of the other, perhaps because the black and Hispanic communities place more stress on family and friendship ties and on the importance of personalized relationships with others.
Taking care of others and devoting oneself to alleviating their sufferings stems in principle from altruism. But, in certain cases, the motivations of those who serve others are ambiguous, even selfish. Some throw themselves headlong into charitable activities because they have a profound need for approbation or affection.12 Some help others in order to raise low self-esteem or because they hope to fill a need for intimacy and human contact that remains unsatisfied in their daily lives.
On another register, some psychologists, like Michael McGrath, at the University of Rochester, speak of pathological altruism, defined as “the willingness of an individual to place the needs of others above him- or herself to the point of causing harm, whether physical, psychological, or both, to the purported altruist.”13 We should note, however, that this definition is ambiguous, and does not allow us to distinguish between egocentric motivations and truly altruistic motivations. Does a mother who sacrifices herself to save her child suffer from pathological compassion? One could say that compassion is unhealthy or inappropriate in situations where the difficulties and sufferings one is ready to take on are much greater than the good one can bring to the other. Sacrificing one’s quality of life in order to satisfy the whims of someone else makes no sense. Letting one’s health deteriorate in order to offer nonvital help to others, or help that others can procure for themselves, when one is at the end of one’s physical or psychological strength is not a reasonable thing to do. On the other hand, when the inconveniences for ourselves are the same order of magnitude as the advantages for the other, the choice depends on our degree of altruism, but should not be regarded as unhealthy. Remember the example of Maximilien Kolbe, a Franciscan friar who, in the Auschwitz extermination camp, offered to take the place of a father when, in revenge for a prisoner’s escape, ten men were chosen to die of hunger and thirst.
Whereas burnout leads to a lack of empathy after a slow wearing-down of emotional equilibrium, other shortfalls of empathy correspond to traits and dispositions sometimes due to hereditary causes, sometimes to the influence of external conditions. They are then associated with brain dysfunctions that have been studied by the neurosciences.
In narcissism, personality disorders, psychopathy, and certain forms of autism, different components of the chain of affective reactions involved in social life do not function normally, and lead to lack of empathy and of consideration for others.
Narcissists think only of themselves and are not really interested in others’ fate, even if they have no difficulty imagining what others are thinking. Still, they are not necessarily manipulative or harmful, like psychopaths.
Those who suffer from personality disorders are also excessively self-centered. Overly emotional, excitable and troubled, they have difficulty correctly inferring others’ feelings. They need love, but are full of resentment and anger, usually because they were neglected or abused when they were children (40% to 70% of them were victims of abuse).14 Because of this, while still needing others, they reject them and suffer from an inner void, a painful emotional life, and recurrent depression. Among them, 10% end up committing suicide, and 90% attempt suicide.
As for autistic people, they suffer from a defect of cognitive perspective. They have trouble imagining what others think and feel. According to Richard Davidson, they also have difficulty regulating their emotions, and hence they fear being exposed to situations that would set off emotional storms in them; this probably explains why they avoid other people’s eyes, gazes which for them are too emotionally charged and hard to decipher.15 Some autistic individuals show little empathy, while others are not only capable of empathy, but feel it more than ordinary people.
It is among psychopaths that empathy is most cruelly lacking. The suffering of others doesn’t move them at all, and they use their intelligence to manipulate and harm others.
Psychopaths (also called “sociopaths” or “antisocial personalities”) are almost entirely devoid of empathy. Usually, as children they already show a lack of interest in the wishes and rights of others, and constantly violate social norms.16 Before they start harming humans, they are often cruel to animals, which they like to torture.
The sight of suffering, terrified or happy people causes no affective reaction among psychopaths. Because they experience no unpleasant feelings when they see their victims suffer, they commit the worst atrocities without either hesitation, fear of punishment or remorse. In particular, they have trouble feeling and imagining emotions of sadness and fear, their own as well as others’. When they are asked to try, their attempts cause very few subjective, psychological, or brain reactions.17 In his book Without Conscience, Hare cites the case of a psychopath who was trying to explain why he felt no empathy for the women he had raped: “They are frightened, right? But, you see, I don’t really understand it. I’ve been frightened myself, and it wasn’t unpleasant.”
Psychopaths lack the whole chain of reactions that begins with emotional contagion, is continued by empathy, and culminates as empathic concern, or compassion. With psychopaths, lacking any feeling in favor of the other, everything occurs on the cognitive level and they excel in mentally imagining what is happening in their heads. They have no other aim but to promote their own interests. Psychologists and criminologists who have worked with psychopaths have been struck by their extreme egocentrism: narcissistic, they think they are superior to others and endowed with innate rights and prerogatives that transcend those of others.18 In brief, according to Robert Hare, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, and one of the pioneers in this field of research, a psychopath is “a self-centered, callous, and remorseless person profoundly lacking empathy.”19 According to Hare, author of a checklist of characteristics that allow a psychopath to be identified,20 “trying to explain a psychopath’s feelings is like describing colors to a color-blind person.”21
Psychopaths can be hard to spot, since they operate under a mask of normality and use their calculating intelligence, often combined with a superficial charm, to deceive and manipulate their victims.
Adrian Raine at the University of Pennsylvania has also shown that when psychopaths are asked to read out loud, in front of witnesses, a description of all the crimes they have committed—a task which in normal subjects sets off pronounced feelings of shame and guilt—the areas of the brain linked to those states of mind were not activated in these individuals.22
A serial killer-rapist maintained he was “kind and gentle” with his victims, five women he had kidnapped at gunpoint, raped, and stabbed to death. As proof of his kindness, he asserted that when he stabbed his victims “the killing was always sudden, so they wouldn’t know what was coming.”23
In a normal population, there are an average of 3% psychopaths among men and 1% among women. But among prisoners, 50% of men and 25% of women reveal personality disorders, and about 20% of men are psychopaths.24 When psychopaths are freed after serving their time in prison, they are three times more likely than other released felons to commit a second offense in the following year.25 In fact, a diagnosis of psychopathy provides the best prognosis for recidivism.
In an overview, James Blair, chief of the Unit on Affective Cognitive Neuroscience at NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health), is of the opinion that the emotional dysfunction linked to psychopathy has a significant genetic component of about 50%.26 He notes that external circumstances, like sexual abuse, which lead to serious personality disorders, are generally accompanied by increased reactivity to emotional disturbances and events perceived as threatening, whereas the opposite is true for psychopaths, who underreact to these events. The emotional nonreactivity of psychopaths is linked to a diminution of functional activity in two areas of the brain linked to the expression and regulation of emotions (the amygdala and the ventrolateral cortex).
If most psychopaths are that way from early childhood, others can become so in extreme circumstances. Forcing people to kill can desensitize them to others’ suffering to the point of making them into psychopaths. John Muhammad was an American soldier who, before being sent to Iraq, was regarded as a likeable person and had an active social life. He was married and had three children. His wife, Mildred, says that everything changed when he came back from Iraq.27 John was a broken man; he hardly spoke at all and no longer wanted people to come near him, his wife included. She ended up asking for a divorce, after which he threatened her with death several times. She took these threats very seriously, since John was someone who weighed his words carefully.
In 2002, five people were killed in a single day, in Maryland, each by a single bullet shot from a distance. In two weeks, as an atmosphere of terror reigned over the region, thirteen people were killed. Many of these murders occurred in the neighborhood of Mildred’s house. When John was finally identified and arrested, the elements of the investigation indicated that the goal of these crimes seemed to be to kill Mildred. By including the murder of his wife in a series of crimes perpetrated seemingly randomly in public places, John could have killed his wife without any suspicion pointing at him. Only the mysterious “beltway sniper” would have been incriminated.
Tragically, John’s syndrome was induced by a system that places other humans in situations where they are forced to kill other humans they don’t know, about whom they are completely ignorant, and toward whom they have on the face of it no reason to show any personal hatred. This process, which leads people to regard anyone on “the other side” as someone to be killed, ends up dehumanizing a normal human being.
Psychopaths are not all violent, and some of them are very successful in modern society, especially in the world of finance and business, as shown in the book by the labor psychologist Paul Babiak, in collaboration with Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.28 These are “successful psychopaths,” in contrast to “psychopaths who fail,” who, impulsive and violent, quickly find themselves in prison. According to Babiak, psychopaths in suits and ties lack empathy, but in the business world, that’s not necessarily seen as a bad thing, especially when there are difficult decisions to make, such as laying off employees or closing a factory.
Eloquent speakers, charming and charismatic but without any scruples, convincing at job interviews, virtuosi of managing their image, and unsurpassed manipulators, they regard their colleagues in a strictly utilitarian way and use them to climb the ladders of business. In a world where the economic environment is more and more competitive, many psychopaths have thus inserted themselves into the upper levels of business and finance. The sadly infamous Bernard Madoff, as well as Jeff Skilling, former president of the Texas company Enron and condemned to twenty-four years of prison for fraud in 2006, are notorious examples.
Two British researchers at the University of Surrey, Belina Board and Katarina Fritzon, used Robert Hare’s evaluation inventory to study the personality traits of thirty-nine high-ranking business executives and compared them to patients at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital: “The results were definitive. The character disorders of the business managers blended together with those of the criminals and mental patients,” Belina Board reported in the New York Times, concluding that the executives in question had become “successful psychopaths” who, like patients suffering from psychotic personality disorders, lacked empathy, tended to exploit others, were narcissistic, dictatorial, and excessively devoted to work.29 They even surpassed psychiatric patients and psychopaths in certain areas such as egocentrism, superficial charm, lack of sincerity, and manipulative tendencies. They were, however, less inclined to physical aggression, impulsiveness, and lack of remorse.
Kent Kiehl, at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, started a multimillion-dollar research program, financed by the National Institute of Mental Health, to collect the records, brain scans, genetic information, and interviews of a thousand psychopaths, with the aim of compiling a database that would be useable for all researchers. Kiehl notes that the cost of legal prosecution and incarceration of psychopaths, added to the tragedies they cause, amounts in the United States to between 250 and 400 billion dollars a year. No other mental disorder of such magnitude has been so neglected.30
One of the main studies of this team, carried out by Carla Harenski, showed that when one exposed psychopaths to emotionally disturbing stimuli (images representing serious moral transgressions—a man pressing a knife against a woman’s throat, or terrified faces), the regions of the brain that react strongly in normal subjects were notably inactive in psychopaths. That is particularly the case for the amygdala, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the superior temporal plane.31 A physical reduction of the size of the amygdala was also observed in psychopathic criminals.32
This points to a link with altruism and compassion, since other studies have shown that meditating on compassion can change the activity and, after a certain amount of practice, the structure of the amygdala.33
In Kiehl’s opinion, it’s the entire paralimbic network (interconnected brain structures involved in the management of emotions—anger and fear, in particular—the pursuit of goals, the respect for or violation of moral norms, decision-making, motivations, and self-control) that is affected.34 His hypothesis is supported by fMRI data, which reveal in psychopaths a thinning of the paralimbic tissue, indicating that this brain region is underdeveloped.35
Adrian Raine has observed major deterioration of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex in personalities with psychopathic tendencies who manifest neurological disorders.36 But, as Raine notes, it is still difficult to distinguish unambiguously the sequence of causes and effects: “Is it the fact of living the violent life of a psychopath that leads to structural and functional modifications of the brain, or is it the other way round?”37
For a long time, following opinions going back to the 1940s and to an oft-cited but not very convincing study carried out in the 1970s, it was taken for granted that these illnesses were incurable and believed that interventions could even aggravate psychopathic tendencies.38 But, more recently, innovative research carried out by the psychologist Michael Caldwell at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Madison, Wisconsin, has given rise to renewed optimism by showing that certain correctly targeted interventions, including cognitive therapy and psychological assistance for families (in the case of juvenile delinquents exhibiting psychopathic features), could prove effective.39
Caldwell used a therapy called decompression, which aims to interrupt the vicious circle of crime and punishment, a cycle that often leads psychopaths to take part in even more reprehensible behavior. In addition, he utilized successful interventions that created more human relationships between guards and inmates.40 Previously, guards saw inmates as nothing but dangerous delinquents who had to be kept under control by any means possible. On their side, the psychopaths, in Caldwell’s words, “don’t make any difference between a human being and a Kleenex”—that is, they regard others as instruments, useful or threatening. By working patiently with everyone, Caldwell managed to help psychopaths see the guards as human beings and to make the guards understand that they could treat psychopaths more humanely in their daily interactions while still being careful to ensure their security.
The results were remarkable: a sample of over 150 young psychopaths treated by Caldwell showed a probability that was twice less likely to commit a crime than an equivalent group serving time in a classic detention and rehabilitation center. In the latter group, the juvenile delinquents studied went on to commit sixteen murders in the four years that followed their release from prison. The same number of those who followed Caldwell’s program committed no murders.
The economic advantages of successful intervention are considerable: every time American society spends $10,000 in treatment, it saves $70,000 that would have been necessary to keep delinquents for a long time in prison.41 Unfortunately, psychopathy is often ignored by health care systems, possibly because nonspecialists have difficulty diagnosing psychopaths, who lie convincingly during interviews with psychologists.
Instead of thinking that psychopaths are monsters, it is important to understand that they are human beings who, because of their empathic and emotional limitations, may be led to behave monstrously. As always, it is necessary to distinguish the illness from the person affected.
As a little girl, Sheila Hernandez always felt alone. “My mother gave me away when I was three to some strangers,” she said, “a man and a lady, and the man molested me when I was around fourteen. A lot of painful things happened to me, and I just wanted to forget. I would wake up in the morning and just be angry that I woke up. I felt like there wasn’t any help for me, ’cause I was just on this earth wasting space. I lived to use drugs and used drugs to live, and since the drugs made me even more depressed, I just wanted to be dead.”42
At the end of her tether, Hernandez was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital. She had HIV, endocarditis, and pneumonia. Her constant use of drugs had affected her circulation so much that she could no longer use her legs. According to one doctor, Sheila Hernandez was “virtually dead.” When Glenn Treisman, who for twelve years has been treating depression in HIV-positive and drug-addicted poor people, came to see her, she told him she didn’t want to speak with him because she would die soon and leave the hospital sooner. “Oh no you’re not,” Treisman said. “You’re not heading out of this place to go and die a stupid, useless death out on the streets. That’s a crazy idea you have. That’s the nuttiest thing I ever heard. You’re going to stay and get off those drugs and get over all these infections of yours, and if the only way I can keep you in here is to declare you dangerously insane, that’s what I’ll do.” Sheila stayed.
After thirty-two days of attentive care, her perceptions completely changed: “It turned out that all what I felt before I went in, I found it was wrong. These doctors told me I had this to offer and that to offer, I was worth something after all. It was like being born all over again.… I came alive for the first time. The day I left, I heard birds singing, and do you know I’d never heard them before? I didn’t know until that day that birds sang. For the first time I smelled the grass and the flowers, and even the sky was new. I had never paid attention to the clouds, you know.”
Sheila Hernandez never took drugs again. A few months later, she returned to Johns Hopkins, where she was employed in hospital administration. She did advocacy work during a clinical study of tuberculosis, and she secured permanent housing for the study’s participants. “My life is so different. I do these things to help other people all the time, and you know I really enjoy that.”
Many people like Sheila never emerge from the abyss. Those who do get out are rare, not because their situation is hopeless, but because no one has come to their aid. The example of Sheila and many others shows that manifesting kindness and love can allow the other to be reborn in a surprising way. The potential for this rebirth was present, so close, but for so long denied or blocked out. The greatest lesson here is the strength of love and the tragic consequences of its absence.
We know that people who have suffered from abuse in early childhood often show self-destructive behavior or violence against others. In their case, it’s not because they were dehumanized, but because, tragically, they weren’t humanized enough by affection, care, presence, and the contact of loving parents or people who showed them human warmth at one stage in their life, that of early childhood, when it is absolutely necessary for a human being’s normal development. We know that meeting or being in the presence of sincerely kind people can make a vital difference.
Other studies suggest that empathy can be an important antidote to prevent physical and sexual abuse and neglect of children. J. S. Milner and his collaborators have shown that mothers who exhibited increased empathy when they watched a video of a crying child presented almost no risk for their own children, while those who showed no discernable change of empathy, whether the child laughed, cried, or simply looked around, presented a high risk of abusing their children. These mothers also testified to feeling personal distress and increased hostility when they watched their child cry.43
As for sexual abuse, it has been proven that certain clinical interventions aiming to increase empathy reduce the probability of abuse, rape, and sexual harassment in men identified as presenting a high risk of committing sexual assault.44
Various research studies have also shown that altruism, induced by amplifying empathy, can inhibit aggression. Research on forgiveness in particular has shown that an important stage in the process of forgiveness consisted of replacing anger with empathy.45 Harmon-Jones and his neuroscientist colleagues have highlighted the fact that empathy directly inhibits the activity of regions of the brain linked to aggression.46
The main lesson to draw from all this information is that empathy is a vital component of our humanity. Without it, we have difficulty giving meaning to our existence, connecting to others, and finding emotional balance. We can also drift toward indifference, coldness, and cruelty. So it is essential to recognize its importance and cultivate it. Moreover, in order to avoid sinking into an excess of affective resonance, which can lead to empathic distress and burnout, we must, as we mentioned in a previous chapter, embed empathy in the vaster emotional and cognitive sphere of altruistic love and compassion, which serves as an anditote to empathy fatigue. We will thus have the necessary qualities to accomplish the benefit of others while at the same time fostering our own fulfillment.