Defining Empathy in the Context and Structure of the Empathy Circle.

Speaker: Edwin Rutsch (10 min) To Video, Summary, AI, Outline, Full Transcripts 

OTTER.AI Summary 

Edwin Rutsch, the founding director of the Empathy Center, discussed the need for a clear and practical definition of empathy at the Empathy Summit. He highlighted the confusion around empathy, referencing criticisms from books and Congress. Rutsch proposed a holistic empathy framework with four parts: basic empathy, self-empathy, imaginative empathy, and holistic empathy. Basic empathy involves deep, non-judgmental listening, while self-empathy is about understanding one's own feelings. Imaginative empathy involves taking on different roles, and holistic empathy encompasses mutual understanding within a group. Rutsch plans to define empathy through Empathy Circles and other activities, aiming to make empathy more concrete and accessible.

Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/Bgx26TtpKx4jTFyGVvNCvJMUJJ8?view=transcript

Action Items

• [ ] Define empathy in the context of the empathy circle practice.

• [ ] Hold empathy circles to explore the definition of empathy.

• [ ] Prepare presentations on the definition of empathy.

• [ ] Write a book on the definition of empathy.

• [ ] Conduct workshops on the definition of empathy.

Outline

Empathy Summit Introduction

• Speaker 1 introduces Edwin Rutsch, the founding director of the Empathy Center, and highlights his role in developing and promoting the Empathy Circle practice.

• Edwin Rutsch welcomes everyone and outlines the vision of building an Empathy Movement, aiming to make mutual empathy a primary personal and social value.

• The summits are planned to be held every three or four months, focusing on the Empathy Circle as a foundational practice.

• Edwin emphasizes the importance of understanding the nature of the Empathy Circle and its role in empathy building.

Defining Empathy

• Edwin discusses the confusion around the concept of empathy, referencing a clip from US Congress where Jeff Sessions questions the definition of empathy.

• He mentions various books criticizing empathy, such as "Suicidal Empathy," "Toxic Empathy," and "The Dark Side of Empathy," highlighting the lack of clear definitions.

• Edwin expresses the need for a clear and practical definition of empathy to build an effective Empathy Movement.

• He announces a new project to define empathy, focusing on the context of the Empathy Circle, aiming to make the concept more concrete and understandable.

Framework for Defining Empathy

• Edwin introduces the concept of "holistic empathy," which includes four basic parts: basic empathy, self empathy, imaginative empathy, and holistic empathy.

• He explains basic empathy as the listener's effort to hear the speaker deeply, accurately, and non-judgmentally, based on Carl Rogers' definition.

• Self empathy involves the speaker feeling and sensing into their own experience, supported by being listened to by someone who understands.

• Imaginative empathy involves taking on roles and perspectives, as demonstrated through role-playing in Empathy Circle facilitator training.

Holistic Empathy and Empathy Circle

• Holistic empathy is described as the feeling of mutual empathy within the Empathy Circle, where everyone feels heard and understood.

• Edwin emphasizes the importance of experiencing empathy within the Empathy Circle to understand its definition better.

• He mentions that the project to define empathy will involve holding Empathy Circles, preparing presentations, writing a book, and conducting workshops.

• The goal is to define empathy in a concrete and practical way, making it more accessible and understandable for everyone.

Role of Imaginative Empathy

• Edwin discusses the role of imaginative empathy, where participants take on different roles and perspectives, enhancing their empathy.

• He references Meryl Streep's experience with empathy in her acting career, highlighting the power of imaginative empathy in connecting with fictional characters.

• The Empathy Circle can include role-playing different roles, such as taking on the perspective of animals or fruits, to explore imaginative empathy.

• Edwin aims to integrate imaginative empathy into the Empathy Circle to enhance the overall empathy experience.

Conclusion and Future Plans

• Edwin concludes the presentation by reiterating the importance of defining empathy within the context of the Empathy Circle.

• He emphasizes that the project to define empathy will be an ongoing effort, aiming to explore and understand the nature of empathy better.

• Speaker 1 expresses excitement about Edwin's upcoming book on the topic, looking forward to reading it.

• The session ends with a positive note, highlighting the potential impact of the Empathy Movement and the ongoing efforts to define and promote empathy.

Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/Bgx26TtpKx4jTFyGVvNCvJMUJJ8?view=transcript

And it is now my pleasure to introduce the founding director of the empathy center, Edwin Rutsch. 

Edwin is the founder director and of the empathy center, and is the developer and long term evangelist of the empathy circle practice without further ado, over to you, Edwin, thank you so much.

Okay, thank you, Ruth and welcome everyone. Got a little slideshow here, I'm gonna bring that up, and here we go. So welcome everyone to our empathy summit are we're building an empathy movement here with the vision of making mutual empathy a primary personal and social value in the world. And these summits are now focusing on the empathy circle as a foundational practice of this moment movement, and we plan to hold these every three or four months. 

And so really glad that you're here and we can really talk about the nature of the empathy circle as a foundational empathy building practice. So we talk a lot about empathy, but what is empathy? You know, a lot of people have a lot of different definitions for it. For example, this is Jeff Sessions in Congress, and he, he asked that question, let me just play this

and anyway, what is empathy? What is empathy? Is this your personal feeling that you are had a tough childhood, or something prejudice that you have you're Protestant or Catholic, your ethnicity, your race, some biases you brought with you to life and to decor? Is that what an empathy

is, hopefully you're able to hear that. So that's in our US Congress, the congressional members are asking, what is empathy? So there seems to be a lot of confusion out there. It seems to be in our government, there's confusion. And also we have these various books. There's multiple books out there that are like against empathy, or there's a new one coming out called suicidal empathy, another one toxic empathy, and then the next one here is the dark side of empathy, and these are all books that are critical of empathy. 

And so, you know, just want to, what do we do when we hear these different criticisms? And you know, how do we relate to them? How do we deal with them? And also, how do they relate to the empathy circle? And so the current definitions are, I find are rather problematic. For one is they're not easy to understand, and they're obviously, you know, not clear to many people, as you can see from all these, you know, different books against empathy and Congress asking about empathy, you know, just this various this lack of empathy. And the definitions, whoever that speaker is, Jonathan, you could mute whoever just came in, thanks. And they can also be abstract. 

And the definitions can be also kind of abstract. For example, you hear a lot about cognitive or effective and cognitive empathy. So I think that we need a really clear and practical definition. If we want to build an empathy movement, we we have to be clear on our terms, and I'm starting a project now going to be really focusing on that for the next year, to define empathy. And I'm the focus, but I want to focus on is to define empathy. I'm going to be holding some empathy circles, you know, exploring the definition, preparing presentations like this one. Want to write maybe a book on the topic, and do some workshops too. So this is just a quick introduction to the this project, and what I want to do is define empathy. What I think is going to be unique about this is to define empathy, not in some sort of a broad, abstract term, but define empathy in the context of the empathy circle, which you you know, hopefully most of you know how to take part in. 

And I'm hoping that by defining empathy in the in the within the context of the empathy circle, that we can take it out of the abstract and make it more concrete. Right? And like in the empathy circle, you're able to actually experience the definition, instead of it just being, you know, abstract, and that we can also map on other definitions, on onto your experience in the empathy circle. So here's the basic overall framework that I'm looking at, you know, for the definition is calling it holistic empathy. And the holistic empathy is has four basic, you know, parts. One is what I would call basic empathy. There's self empathy, there's imaginative empathy and then holistic empathy. 

So let's look at how these different aspects or work within in the empathy circle. So we're we're all familiar with the empathy circle like or like hope most of you are, and we have our speaker, active listener, silent listener, and in a facilitator, and we have, when we have the speaker, the active listener listens to, to the speaker, and in that case, they they empathize with, they sense into the experience of of the speaker. So that's kind of like the basic empathy that we do in the empathy circle. And we're actually pretty much call that empathy, and it's also what Carl Rogers, who our work is based on, is calling empathy. So he says, Rogers, who the empathy circle is work? 

Who's his work is what we're basically building the empathy circle on. He says empathy is the listeners effort to hear the other person deeply, accurately and non judgmentally. Empathy involves skillful, reflective listening that clarifies and amplifies the person's own experiencing and meaning without imposing the listener's own material. And then he continues on. It's empathic way of being has several facets. You're entering the private perceptual, perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home. And it involves sensitive moment by moment, sensitivity to the moment by moment, to the felt changing meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear, rage and tenderness or confusion or whatever that he and she is experiencing. So that's what we what I'm calling basic empathy. And like I'm saying Rogers, and would call that empathy. And then another aspect is self empathy.

 So in this sense, the speaker is when they're sharing that they have self empathy is, is their their feeling and sensing into the their selves. And again, I'm going to go back to Rogers, who says, by being listened to, being listened to by someone who understands, makes it possible for persons to listen more accurately to themselves with greater empathy towards their own visceral experiencing their own vaguely felt meanings. So what he's saying that, as in the empathy circle, when someone listens to you and reflecting back their understanding of what you say, it actually supports you in your own self, empathy, in, you know, sensing into your own experience. 

And so that's the self empathy. The other is imaginative empathy. This is another aspect and in the and we don't talk about that much in the empathy circle, and what we do when we do the empathy circle facilitator training, we have, we used to have one module where we would do role playing. Each person would take on the role of someone in the family who's having a conflict about inheritance. 

And so you would take on a role. And so role play that, and then also do empathic listening within the context of the empathy circle. So that imagination part, you know, taking on those roles is what is another level of empathy. And let me just go here show so imagine if empathy is we can feel, we can feel and imagine into any role and perspective. And like Meryl Streep says, I've thought a lot about the power of empathy in my work, it's the current that connects me in the actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story. It allows me to feel pretend feeling sorrows and imagined pain. 

And in that sense, we could take. You know, with the imagine of empathy in the empathy circle, we, we can, you know, just these are all Meryl Streep in different roles. She's Julia Child, she's Margaret Thatcher, she's Karen Silkwood, she's Miranda Presley. And so in the same way that we could imagine ourselves into the role, you know, she's imagining herself into the role, and then those different roles could take part in an empathy circle and listen to each other, which is like two levels of empathy, basic empathy, and imaginative empathy. So another thing we can do role playing, so we're really talking about this mansion of empathy, is taking on roles. 

And we could take on the role of of, you know, a tiger, or, you know, any animal, for example. And we can also take on the roles of of, you know, being fruit. So it's pretty much anything that we can take on the roles. So another aspect is what I'm calling holistic empathy, and that is going to whip through this. And so that's holistic empathy, is that the whole space, the empathy circle, is, you know, that feeling that you get when everyone feels heard and understood. In the empathy circle, there's a quality of mutual empathy between all the participants. 

And that's what I'm calling holistic empathy is. So we're really sensing, you know, basic empathy, sensing into others experience self empathy, sensing into our own experience. Imagine empathy sent imagining, you know, our own experience. And holistic empathy is sensing into the whole community experience. So that's it, and let me stop the share.

Hopefully made that in within my time. So this is the beginning of this project to explore the nature of empathies, of the definition of empathy, within the empathy, the context of the empathy circle. It's going to be an ongoing project, hopefully. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Edwin. I can think I can speak for everybody that I'm really, really excited to to know that there's going to be a book out there by Edwin, and I hardly wait to read it. I.