Empathy and the Novel

This is a huge topic and I feel quite over-awed just approaching it. There’s so much to say and quite a few people have given excellent suggestions to me already (see previous posts). Perhaps a good place to start is with a quote from Joyce Carol Oates (courtesy of pages turned’s blog): “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.”

Since reading involves an active imagining of someone else’s world, the links and parallels with empathy are many. Interestingly, in “Empathy and the Novel” (2007), Suzanne Keen argues that while novelists use empathy both as a narrative strategy and a subject of their novels, and clearly engage strong affective responses in their readers, this does not necessarily translate into altruistic behaviour.

Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, but its proper role in shaping the behaviour of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. Keen surveys these debates and offers a series of hypotheses about literary empathy, including narrative techniques inviting empathetic response. She argues that above all readers’ perception of a text’s fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers’ empathy, by releasing readers from their guarded responses to the demands of real others. She confirms the centrality of narrative empathy as a strategy, as well as a subject, of contemporary novelists. (book blurb, my emphasis)

This echoes other research findings on empathy and the movies, that (low empathy) men are far more likely to enjoy a movie (and empathise with the characters) if they perceive the characters as fictional rather than based on real life. I think real life brings a lot more anxiety into play, such as fears that people will make real-life demands on you for time and attention / affection / money. Fiction allows us to relax and engage “softer” (less guarded) emotions.

I also wanted to quote from Litlove’s post on Josipovici the other day:

…. once again the notion of being in the same place as a fundamental prerequisite for sympathy is raised. We might need to be in the same geographical space to coincide with an event in a different historical time, or we might need to make the imaginative leap to the same mindset as another person, to understand an enigmatic point of view, but true sympathy demands that we change places, that we move ourselves either physically or mentally into another realm altogether, so that the same perspective might be shared. And the point of doing this, Josipovici seems to suggest (to me at least) is that this whole awkward business of moving and mental shape-shifting is one of the basic and most admirable building blocks of love.

I like the way that empathy (or sympathy here) is a building-block of love. From a purely psychological perspective, that links up to the point that empathy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for therapeutic change. Being able to enter into the thoughts and feelings of another doesn’t mean that you will be acting compassionately towards them. Hunters will tell you that they try to think like their prey, much like a good detective will try and imagine herself into the mind of the criminal. (What did they think or feel when they were standing there under that tree, looking up at the house?) Stalkers are particularly creepy because they get into your mind and you have no idea what their intentions might be. This has relevance to therapy because sometimes, if the therapist is not sensitive to how they are being perceived, the client might see the therapist as hunting them and trying to exploit their vulnerability.

So perhaps (in agreement with openpalm) I’m saying that empathy is not enough. There needs to be compassion (or love) as well. Valerie Stone (an Australian psychologist) writes about how humans use their well-developed intellectual abilities for compassion or cruelty, and how language is used to construct (or symbolise) the world in such a way that provides an outlet for kind or cruel feelings.

Cruelty is what happens when we use our symbolic capacity to define another person as ‘the enemy’, and use theory of mind and executive function to plan an outlet for our ancient instincts for aggression. Compassion is what happens when we use our symbolic capacity to define another person as part of our in-group, and use our theory of mind and executive function to plan ways to benefit them, using ancient instincts for empathy.

I’ll have to develop these ideas a bit more during the course of the week, if patient admin allows. I’d be interested to read (online at Google books) more of what Keen has to say. She quotes Little Women for a start (which I’ve never read) and then readers’ responses to Middlemarch (which I have). I liked the reference to Cassaubon coming up with a theory that tries to link everything together. Sometimes I feel that way about empathy.

The write couple

Our parents provide us with a template of what it means to be a couple, as Adam Phillips reminds us in Going Sane, and this can be very helpful and also quite depressing. For most of my life I’ve grown up with the idea that relationships don’t really work, at least not in my family. And I’m really hoping that I can improve on this sometime soon! I know it takes a lot of time and patience and effort (and a good sense of humour) but I think I could also do with a bit of literary inspiration here.

So I’ve been racking my brains to think of famous couples — in fiction, in movies and on TV. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far (in no particular order, and mixing media): Elizabeth and Darcy; Hope and Michael (from Thirtysomething); Beauty and the Beast; Homer and Marge; Julia Roberts and Richard Gere (in Pretty Woman); Heathcliff and Catherine; Romeo and Juliet; Anthony and Cleopatra.

The first couple I thought of was Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Not surprisingly, some psychologists use this as an example of “Cognitive Therapy” – how misperceptions and “faulty cognitions” lead to, well, pride and prejudice. And how emotions can change once those thoughts are addressed and proved to be incorrect. Psychologists have also used Hope and Michael in couples therapy – showing husbands what it’s like to be a bit more sensitive for example (this was the early 90s after all). I’ll leave Beauty and the Beast to another time maybe – but as with Cinderella and her Prince there’s a strong transformational element here (and also some perceptual issues). Homer and Marge? Well, Homer’s basically an overgrown boy but he loves Marge and he makes it up to her so I suppose they make it work. Pretty Woman is a variation on the Cinderellas theme. And here is where I confess that I’ve never actually read Wuthering Heights. Shocking I know. The closest I’ve come to that is hearing my sister play the Kate Bush song “Cathy I’ve come home” about a million times. Romeo and Juliet is a whole discussion in itself but there are a number of different levels to this – invididual vs family and society, how love is stronger when it’s forbidden, and how pleasure is amplified by anxiety perhaps.

From a therapy point of view, I get to see many examples of what not to do in a relationship – all the disappointment, the settling for less, the frustration and resentment and bitterness. But I’m interested in couples that manage to make it work. Not so much the smug-marrieds as the inspirational-marrieds. Let me know if you have any enlightening or inspiring books I can add to my couples-education reading list.