|
Measuring Empathy
E.T. Barker
If we could measure this type of empathy accurately it would make a big difference.
If we were as preoccupied to measure empathy as we were to measure I.Q. wouldn’t it be interesting. The people you work with, let alone your parents, where they would score on that, or where one’s self would score on that, if we had an accurate test to measure empathy, like a blood test, a test that would really nail it down. Then maybe we could more convincingly, if we decided we wanted people who had a good capacity for empathy, go about creating child care arrangements which gave us human beings, gave us adults that could live in peace and tranquillity and with loving relationships and live co-operatively with each other.
I think we’ve created a society that’s doing quite the opposite. I guess working in a place like Oak Ridge makes you overly preoccupied about these things. When reporters would call about the latest murder, and they would ask, “How can this happen?” I always told them my surprise was that there weren't more Bernardos or whoever the big name killer of the day was. That’s the thing that is surprising to me, and I see teenagers now in my private practise, conduct disordered teens, and the amount of latent violence is incredible. The Oklahoma thing doesn’t come as a surprise to people who work with those people. What comes as a surprise is that it doesn’t happen more often.
But what's so scary about the Bernardo and OJ trials is the number of people compelled to read and watch all the details. Why? I don't believe healthy, well adjusted people have more than a passing interest in that stuff. I believe our attraction to violence mirrors or reflects the amount of violence we were subjected to as children -- emotional violence, physical violence and sexual violence. Violent behaviour toward children is endemic and sickeningly acceptable. Emotional violence toward children is
* normative*. People who think we're OK as a society except for sickos like Bernardo should be looking in the mirror. The news media know what sells.
*Normative Abuse is the term coined by Karen Walant in her ground-breaking 1995 book Creating the Capacity for Attachment. Jason Aronson Inc. ... "Normative abuse occurs when the attachment needs of the child are sacrificed for the cultural norms of separation and individuation..." |
