We don't lack empathy

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Strange sounding statement I know, but bear with me....

When ever two people communicate emotions, they convert the internal emotional language in which their experiences are written into a verbal and kinestetic (sp) language they both understand. Two NTs can do this easily because their internal languages are very similar, if not the same. We aspies, on the other hand, have a different internal emotional language, and it doesn't translate into words and gestures as well (not surprising, given that these words and gestures have developed to allow NTs to transfer information about emotions).

So, saying Aspies have no empathy is like saying someone in a foreign country who doesn't speak the language is deaf and mute.

What you're saying reminds me of shy people who get accused of being stuck up and aloof.

I tend to agree completley with you. Clinicians label aspies and auties as being devoid of empathy, when often, it is the circumstance that is not being understood on the same emotional level.

I sometimes have to rewind the context of something being said in my brain to understand that I should offer an empathetic response. It mainly happens to me when some one is talking about a third party who had something good or bad happen. I have to review it quickly to arrive at the appropriate thing to say, instead of just being oblivious.

Maybe it's my autistic lack of empathy talking, but I think you're wrong. I have no "Other feeling." To me the world of emotions itself is a scary, scary place I prefer to avoid by using my intellect. When my intellect fails me, I feel bombarded with strange emotions and other irrational cognitions.

I recognize and accept these feelings and emotional states and the behaviors that they may impel:

• Thirst
• Hunger
• Climactic comfort (temperature, humidity, air quality, and the weather generally)
• Sensual pleasure (positive stimuli from life-promoting behaviors)
• Pain (the feeling of being hurt that compels avoidance)
• Contemplation (the means by which the causes and effects of a behavior are measured; needed to make a decision)
• Decision (the point at which the mind has rendered its verdict for a forthcoming behavior or attitude; creates a state of resolve, or willfulness)
• Revulsion and avoidance (necessary for security; avoiding antagonistic stimuli that attack self-goals)
• Anxiety (the unpleasurable state that compels new contemplation and decisiveness so that the will will not falter)
• Triumph (the self's defeating an obstacle to realize a decision; actualization of the will)
• Sociality (herein lies a spectrum of emotive states relating to the affects of social interaction; necessary for an accurate projection and reception of one's social image in relation to one's will; these affects include love, hatred, compassion, ridicule, shame, and more)
  

em·pa·thy (mp-th) n.

1. Direct identification with, understanding of, and vicarious experience of another person's situation, feelings, and motives.
2. The projection of one's own feelings or emotional state onto an object or animal.

empa·thetic (-thtk) or em·pathic (-pthk) adj.

Main Entry: em·pa·thy
Pronunciation: 'em-p&-thE
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural -thies
1 : the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
2 : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for empathy

Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.


I have empathy but I do not experiance empathic behavior. I can (better than many NTs) understand, in a very logical sense, how someone is feeling (if they tell me). I can not however, translate this into understanding their feelings with out them telling me what they are feeling. I also can not vicariously experiance their feelings.

When someone is explaining to me something bad that happened to him, i will feel bad too. I am able to imagine how I would feel if the same thing happened to me. Is that empathy ? If yes, then i have empathy.

The fact that, in this situation, i don't know what to say nor how to act so i just stand there speechless and looking spaceout, doesn't mean that i don't care.

I do agree.

:: Firstly, I have been taking care of handicaped people (blind, down syndrome, wheel-chair, alzheimer). I was very good at it, because I could display empathy - but no pity - and could communicate in a different way than NT. I never learned that; I just did it instinctively.

:: Secondly, 20 years ago, I have been living one year in Germany. Being not interested in the language nor the country, not knowing I was an aspie, I really felt good in that country because people were kind and patient with me. As a foreigner, I was not supposed to know how to behave in a shop, during a meal, and so on. All that social things I am supposed to know in my native country but that I don't master.

I never really thought of it that way, but you're totally right. I always felt I had empathy anyway (at least, in more recent years).

And I also resent it when shy people are seen as stuck-up - but then again, it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes.

[quote="NeantHumain"]Maybe it's my autistic lack of empathy talking, but I think you're wrong. I have no "Other feeling." To me the world of emotions itself is a scary, scary place I prefer to avoid by using my intellect. When my intellect fails me, I feel bombarded with strange emotions and other irrational cognitions.quote]

Therein lies the seat of your empathy, NeantHumain; the scary, scary place can become less so as your comfort zone expands through introspection. Good luck!

I was kidding, actually. I was satirizing what the theory of mind propenents believe we believe. I'm not a robot—no matter what some people think!

I definitely consider myself empathetic, and I can get pretty emotional over other people's problems, but when someone is standing in front of me telling me about what happened, using gestures and facial expressions to convey their emotional state, all I see is a person waving their hands and making faces. I have to really force myself to act as if I care, even though I usually do.

I like that analogy.



Postscript: I like robots a lot. They are easy to empathize with.
Okay, even I do not get the subtext of my postscript.

Doh!! !! !! !! I really thought you were being ironic, but thought I had better take you seriously. My lack of empathy really goofed this up. Sorry!

I agree. It really iritates me that they use this word "empathy" it is misleading. I most certainly have empathy. I can put myself in someone elses shoes. To me this goes along with thinking objectively.

What I do not have is this socio-emotional shorthand that consists of body language, and other subtle cues.
So to me it is like saying that since I am not a stenographer, I must be illiterate. The shorthand is faster, I'll give them that, but it is not the only way to read and write.

This is very damaging to the reputation of the autistic community, because it perpetuates the image of us being cold and emotionless. Perhaps we should petition the DSM.

Yeah, I agree as well. I know I have empathy in me, and I feel it when someone's upset or something like that, but alot of the time it appears as I don't care because I either don't know how to respond or feel flooded with emotions that it becomes too hard to respond so I just close off.
I like the deaf and mute analogy as well

I agree! I wish, quite often, that people understood that, before they accuse me.

I don't think lack of empathy is part of either the DSM-IV-TR or ICD-10 criteria for any pervasive developmental disorder. Lack of empathy and other emotional deficits are associated features noted in clinical descriptions. Lack of empathy is part of the criteria of narcissistic and antisocial (dissocial) personality disorders, though.

OK I wasn't exactly sure about that.
I guess Mr Baron-Cohen is the one that talks incessantly about a lack empathy.

What this topic is about is absolutely true. All those people who complain about me not having empathy for them never have empathy for me. Like a lot of things in life, I'm not annoying people anymore than they annoy me. And being that I put up with it a lot more than they do, they have no right to complain.