{"title":"Empathy or sympathy: a necessary distinction?","authors":"Ivana S Marková","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241261031","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As a deeply hybrid discipline, psychiatry demands research that tackles the concepts constituting it and its objects. This is an essential prerequisite to empirical studies, the validity of which are directly dependent on a clear understanding of the underlying concepts. Empathy and sympathy are concepts used variably and inconsistently in clinical practice and research, with ensuing uncertainties around their role and meaning. Using a historical epistemology approach, this paper compares these concepts by examining the structures, intersections, stabilities and factors that shape them. It shows that neither concept is invariant, and, despite overlap, the concepts are essentially different, underpinned by different assumptions, holding different functions and capturing different phenomena. In turn, such differences require apposite approaches to their empirical study.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"History of Psychiatry","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X241261031","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"HISTORY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
As a deeply hybrid discipline, psychiatry demands research that tackles the concepts constituting it and its objects. This is an essential prerequisite to empirical studies, the validity of which are directly dependent on a clear understanding of the underlying concepts. Empathy and sympathy are concepts used variably and inconsistently in clinical practice and research, with ensuing uncertainties around their role and meaning. Using a historical epistemology approach, this paper compares these concepts by examining the structures, intersections, stabilities and factors that shape them. It shows that neither concept is invariant, and, despite overlap, the concepts are essentially different, underpinned by different assumptions, holding different functions and capturing different phenomena. In turn, such differences require apposite approaches to their empirical study.
期刊介绍:
History of Psychiatry publishes research articles, analysis and information across the entire field of the history of mental illness and the forms of medicine, psychiatry, cultural response and social policy which have evolved to understand and treat it. It covers all periods of history up to the present day, and all nations and cultures.