Articles: empathy.
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Empathy is a complex form of psychological inference that enables us to understand the personal experience of another person through cognitive/evaluative and affective processes. Recent findings suggest that empathy for pain may involve a 'mirror-matching' simulation of the affective and sensory features of others' pain. Despite such evidence for a shared representation of self and other pain at the neural level, the possible influence of the observer's own sensitivity to pain upon his perception of others' pain has not been investigated yet. ⋯ Interestingly, pain judgements, inferred either from facial pain expressions or from pain-inducing events, were strongly related to inter-individual differences in emotional empathy among CIP patients, while such correlation between pain judgement and empathy was not found in control subjects. The results suggest that a normal personal experience of pain is not necessarily required for perceiving and feeling empathy for others' pain. In the absence of functional somatic resonance mechanisms shaped by previous pain experiences, others' pain might be greatly underestimated, however, especially when emotional cues are lacking, unless the observer is endowed with sufficient empathic abilities to fully acknowledge the suffering experience of others in spite of his own insensitivity.
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The concept of caring in nursing education is foundational. Knowledge development regarding caring in face-to-face classroom settings, effective online teaching approaches, differences between online and face-to-face classroom settings, and supporting student success in online settings is extensive. ⋯ Thirteen students were emailed surveys consisting of eight open-ended questions; II students responded. Eight themes emerged from the data: frequent feedback, timeliness, reciprocity of caring online, personal connection and empathy, clarity, multiple contact opportunities, second-fiddle worries, and teacher's commitment to learning.
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This study proposes through a case illustration that psychoanalytic patients who can process both aggression and loss through a mourning process are able to free themselves from pathological self attack when the object relations work of attachment, psychic holding, and separation transpires. In the case of Helen discussed here, transformation through a "developmental mourning process" results in the evolution of powerful psychological capacities for interiority, self agency, and interpersonal compassion. This developmental mourning process is endowed with the assimilation and psychic fantasy symbolization of aggression.