Empathy, sympathy, & compassion: part 2
Well–I think I need to revisit an old post on “empathy, sympathy, and compassion.”
Recently I heard from commenter “ianstrever,” who said this in response to my blog post: “You got this completely wrong. The latin roots explain the difference. Empathy contains the root of ‘em’ or ‘in.’ Thus, to empathize with someone means to be ‘in’ the same situation; to feel what they feel. Sympathy contains the root ’sym/syn’ or ‘like.’ Therefore, the sympathetic person has been in a situation that is like the one someone else is experiencing, but it is not exactly the same thing.”
Not being one who wants to get stuff like this wrong, I consulted dictionary.com, and here’s what I found (bold-face emphasis added by me):
empathy–noun. 1. The intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. 2. The imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.
sympathy–noun. 1. Harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another. [...] 3. The fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble, fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration. [...] 7. Psychology. A relationship between persons in which the condition of one induces a parallel or reciprocal condition in another.
First, let’s set aside the argument about Latin roots–I’m more interested in how the words are understood and used by American English-speaking people today, even if our usage departs from the original meaning of the words.
It’s not a perfect fit, but I think these definitions support my original post: empathy is the act of understanding another person’s feelings or experiences or perspectives–”I get that you’re upset. It makes sense to me.” But one doesn’t have to share the feelings or experiences or perspectives. As it says in the definition above, empathy is the intellectual identification with another person. (And yet, the definition also says an empathic person could be having a “vicarious experiencing of” the other person’s feelings, so the waters are still a bit muddy!)
And as for sympathy, my original definition understood sympathy as sharing the feelings of another, not simply having an intellectual understanding of the feelings. “You’re upset,” a sympathetic person would say, “and I am too!” This is borne out in the definition above: “harmony of or agreement in feeling,” “the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another,” “a parallel or reciprocal condition in another.”
I was originally drawing on the work of David Burns when I wrote the post on empathy, sympathy, and compassion. I believe his understanding of empathy is consistent with my definition–it’s the act of understanding another person, if not sharing the other person’s feelings or perspective. As I said above, these definitions from dictionary.com don’t fully clarify things…the definition of empathy allows for at least a little bit of what I’d call sympathy, and the definition of sympathy allows for a little bit of compassion! But I’ll stand by my original post and continue using these three words like this:
1. Empathy: I get you.
2: Sympathy: I get you, and I share your feeling.
3: Compassion: I get you, and I want to help you.
And thanks to “ianstrever,” who challenged me to check my work and clarify my thoughts. S/he probably still disagrees with me, but it’s always good to think these things through!
