The empathy lie

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Then why is ''lack of empathy'' the first thing listed under psychopathy?

I'm starting to wonder if empathy isn't a symptom of something else

Kind of like Stockholm Syndrome

I always think that people seem to "suffer" from empathy

Well then I suppose I had correctly surmised the basis for psychopathy earlier in the thread. TBH I had never known or much cared about the rigorous definition of psychopathy or whether it was in fact something Hollywood invented as a plot device, like losing one's memory from getting clocked in the head:

To me empathy is something one feels, and lack of it can present a problem when 2 people who are both on the autism spectrum get into a romantic relationship. This reminds me of the one time I had a fling with somebody my first girlfriend knew from school. The morning after I spent the night with her, she made me breakfast which was pancakes made from Jiffy Mix and I remember a certain feeling of being "at home with a friend" that I never got when being with my then ex-girlfriend, who acknowledged me as her boyfriend and was affectionate etc. but somehow I just never got that same feeling being with her, or I might have been more motivated to keep the relationship going (although I don't think she was ever truly "in love" with me — she certainly liked me, I met her criteria for attractiveness and managed to get my foot in the door so to speak right when she discovered her previous boyfriend was now with somebody else).

Sorry if this isn't clear. Although this isn't the L&D section, I genuinely believe that if two people in a relationship are both on the AS then should get relationship counseling, but it might be different if they both have diagnoses and are aware of the challenges, which my first gf and I certainly weren't. Because they don't have enough naturally occurring empathy between them, at least by my definition of empathy.

Last edited by MaxE on 26 Dec 2025, 4:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A lot of common emotions we feel are often down to empathy, like embarrassment and rejection. I feel embarrassment very strongly, because it's like other people's thoughts, feelings and opinions kinda live rent-free in my head, and feeling embarrassed means an existing self-awareness.

But, like I said at the beginning on this thread, empathy is all about deliberate dickhead behaviour, until an autistic deliberately be's a dickhead, then they are "lacking empathy".

One time someone on an autism site said that they don't understand how people with so much empathy can be so manipulative by posting in the "haven" section so they can get sympathy (as criticising in haven sections on forums is against the rules). But I thought, "hang on, isn't this kind of manipulation of posting in the haven section in order to get the replies one wants actually a trait of empathy?"
So I think that "empathy" is just another word that often gets thrown around in arguments or criticisms between people who can't agree to disagree, a bit like when people in arguments yell "grow up!" even if the other person is not acting like a child if they are dealing with the argument responsibly and maturely.

(Is "be's" a word, by the way? We say it often but it looks odd in text).

Probably because empathy they meant caring or "a heart" or whatever something more sympathetic as a form of understanding, or means of emotional literacy, and possibly in a moralistic sense too.

Think I can agree with the above post .And might even possibly speculate that empathy might lead to some sort of Intuition .

I have noticed, though, that people only use the word empathy in the "kind, understanding, compassionate" context, and never in the "cognitive empathy" context. So say if a psychopath was beating up their spouse they're not exactly going to say, "oh my psychopathic spouse is beating me up because they have so much empathy".

Am not sure the concept of empathy, has the possibility to be double edged ? Used to possibly figure out how to effectively hurt another person . Or sense where their sensativities or weaknesses might be ? or not be? .
or does that describe another type of person?

I would say that it's the victim in an abusive relationship who would be more likely to develop "empathy" as a survival mechanism

Until the day they find the courage to get out

"Oh my psychopathic spouse is beating me up, I bet their colleagues are being mean to them again, it probably really upset them when I asked if their missing sock could be under the sofa, I know how important it is to them to appear all-knowing in my eyes, poor dear..."

Is that empathy though?

There's an experiment where you give electric shocks to dogs, and if they can't escape, after a while they just give up. You can open the door as you shock them and they don't go through. That is learned helplessness.

I have wondered whether empathy plays a role in learned helplessness in humans, in some situations. "Someone wants this to happen. It makes sense to me, their wanting this to happen... it is something that makes sense to me when other things, like my wanting or not wanting, are not making sense."

There are situations in which you lose some sense of yourself and it is replaced by a sense of somebody else. That does feel pathological to me, like a symptom, certainly not a desirable human trait.

It takes empathy to enjoy someone suffering and pain, actually. Usually it's mixed with some form of egocentry where they'd feel superior over someone else's expense. All sadists have empathy. It's a requirement.
The same goes with narcissists and maintaining whatever self image they are having -- like why else some of these cases felt hurt or inadequate for someone else's happiness and accomplishments?

Being a good predator requires an adequate amount of empathy to predict and mold someone's mind, feelings, etc.

The abuser who is really good at isolating their victim? They have greater empathy that just happened to mix socialization and relationship dynamics.
They deliberately drive people away, and it's not a clumsy accident for them like it is with many socially awkward cases. It's akin to being so deliberate, like intentionally on going second place instead of doing their best to aim first place. To be so socially precise, empathy is required.


And that's how that word is so, so twisted.
Everything I said is akin to what people tends to describe as "lack of empathy" -- they meant conscience, sense of guilt, morality, caring, or something more sympathetic. But does it matter if someone feels guilt, has conscience, knows what's right and wrong, tries to care and be sympathetic when everything they do is not culturally aligned that it offends people more than help?


Then there's the flip side;

Empaths with too little ego to go about themselves. Weak empaths.
Empaths who are not capable to boundaries. Empaths that are easily influenced. Empaths with lacking discernment. Empaths who cannot break the emotional dynamic because they had caught whatever someone's "want" or whatever.

Sure, they have empathy. But living such a way, more like I call them impulsive and/or compulsive.

I agree with most of that, but I don't think it is necessarily anything to do with strength or weakness. In cases of extreme power dynamics, for example, people will struggle to maintain a sense of self, and that isn't a question of character: it is biological. Or in the case of classic Stockholm, that is, isolation.

Yeah.

I had learned about that recently; on how people tend to depend their sense of self and regulation with other people.
In which, in a neurobiological sense, they had to else they'd fragment or something like that. I've yet to fully study about it.


... It's something I actually don't have tho. And that my own biology seems to ran a bit different from that.
Or at least, not how I work and why I cannot relate to many accounts about being a human. Or that neurodivergence cannot explain it.

I've related strongly to a lot of what you've written, Edna3362, and some of your writing has seemed simply beautiful to me.

On a fundamental level we need this ^ to navigate reality, because reality is a social construct. Sanity involves some degree of coordinated social feeling.

Not too much of it though just enough.

If there is only one other human reference point, we will fall into sync with that one point. That doesn't mean necessarily that there is only one other person. It could also be extremely hierarchical environments like prisons, where only one viewpoint has any force or legitimacy.

And then I think of cognitive dissonance: that we will neatly excise from our minds anything that our environment refuses to support.

Why is that funny