E.D.D.
by Danny Fisher
There’s a great piece by Douglas LaBier, director of the District of Columbia’s Center for Adult Development, in today’s Washington Post. It will be of particular interest to Buddhists–especially those working in the caregiving professions.
- You may not realize it, but a great number of people suffer from EDD.
No, you’re not reading a misprint of ADD or ED. The acronym stands for empathy deficit disorder.
Nor will you find it listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, even though that tome has been expanding as normal variations of mood and temperament have increasingly been defined as disorders. I’m hesitant to suggest adding another one. But this one is real.
Based on my 35 years of experience as a psychotherapist, business psychologist and researcher, I have come to believe that EDD is a pervasive but overlooked condition with profound consequences for the mental health of individuals and of our society. People who suffer from EDD are unable to step outside themselves and tune in to what other people experience. That makes it a source of personal conflicts, of communication failure in intimate relationships, and of the adversarial attitudes–even hatred–among groups of people who differ in their beliefs, traditions or ways of life.
Based on my own experience as a chaplain, I’m very much inclined to agree with LaBier. Furthermore, I think he’s right on the money when he talks about the ways a lack of empathy can effect groups. (It seems to me that empathy is a key ingredient for real interfaith dialogue.)
There’s also certainly a Buddhistic quality to his argument:
- The net result [of EDD] is that we don’t recognize that we’re all one, bound together. We only see ourselves. I sometimes invite people to think of it this way: When you cut your finger, you don’t say, “That’s my finger’s problem, not mine”; nor do you do a cost-benefit analysis before deciding whether to take action.
You respond immediately because you feel the pain.
[...]
By focusing on developing empathy, you can deepen your understanding and acceptance of how and why people do what they do and you can build respect for others. This doesn’t mean that you are whitewashing the differences you have with other people or letting them walk over you. Rather, empathy gives you a stronger, wiser base for resolving conflicts and trumps self-centered, knee-jerk reactions to surface differences.
LaBier is quite convincing in his case, and I encourage you to read all of what he has to say here.
Happened to come across your blog mentioning my Wash Post article. Thanks for your kind comments, and yes, you did identify a Buddhist theme (as well as a Sufi perspective) which informs my work. Best wishes, Douglas LaBier
Thanks for stopping by, Douglas. Again, wonderful piece.
It is certainly my experience that there are people in the world with degrees of inability to empathize with others.
I’ve taken up an interest in sociopaths — in part, ironically, because I felt *I* was failing to understand what it was that was going inside of them. That is, *I* couldn’t empathize.
Contrary to the many slipshod depictions in many of our movies, a quick description of a sociopath is someone who is utterly incapable of empathizing with others. The problem becomes compounded because, without the satisfaction that comes from caring for others’ wellbeing, sociopaths, pretty much, come to find satisfaction from ‘gaming’ other people.
Sociopaths cannot be ‘cured,’ from what I understand; their brainwaves indicate a non-response to the suffering of others.
I do wonder if LaBier’s EDD people are on a continuum between ‘normal’ and sociopaths and if sensitizing them is really very difficult because, they, too, are hardwired.
All of this raises the question of how remote some people are from buddha-nature. Was the seed never planted?
Tom: Your point about “degrees of inability to empathize with others” is well taken. Certainly, there’s the inability to empathize and then there’s sociopathology. That’s an important nuance that wasn’t explicitly discussed here until you commented. Thank you for bringing it up.
Btw, Kind Danny, I see now that LaBier wrote a companion piece to his EDD article, “Have a Heart; Here’s How.”
It sounds like a good exercise for softening a hardened heart.
Interesting article – thanks for catching it and posting about it. This lack of empathy seems so much worse these days, but I’m never sure if it really is worse, or if I’m suffering from that disease of the elderly in which nothing is as good as it once was.
To me it’s a matter of concern, because I don’t see this self-absorbtion making anyone happier.