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What is empathy?  The definition given by the authors whose research article on the topic I am presenting today define empathy as “an emotional and behavioral response to another’s emotional state, which is similar in affective tone and is based on the other’s circumstances rather than one’s own.”

Because my blog is concerned with the ongoing consequences a person acquires from having experienced severe abuse, trauma and maltreatment during their infant-childhood, knowing what empathy is and is not matters because we did not grow up – obviously – within an early environment where empathy was shown to us by our earliest caregivers.

At least that’s what I have always assumed to be true until this moment as I prepare this post.  My life as my mother’s victim was entirely distorted by her psychosis and mental illness.  At this moment, a thought has occurred to me that seems almost too bizarre to print – but might also be close to the truth.

Given that my mother did not seem able to operate from a conscious stance in regard to me, it might be possible that she WAS practicing her version of empathy with me.  What if, as an infant and very young child she suffered so much that on her unconscious level she KNEW nobody empathized with her.  What if her treatment of me was (bizarrely) intended to create a human being that COULD empathize with her early feelings?

It is often suggested that a person like my mother splits off her own ‘badness’ and projects it out onto the chosen child so that this child becomes the container for the intolerable self hatred.  That picture matches what I can see of my mother’s treatment of me as she hated and abused me from birth and for the next 18 years I lived in her home.

What if, as a component of this sickness, she also was directly projecting out onto me her own experience of how awful it felt to be made to feel that BAD in the beginning of HER life?  How better to create another human being who could empathize with her own feelings than to reenact patterns of abuse with me that would have the end result of making me feel as BADLY as she did?

I was not human to my mother.  I was the devil’s child.  That much I know.  I was not a separate, unique (wonderful) individual person to my mother.  I was her projection of her own evil badness that somehow she internalized as a very young person herself.  How better to make ME absolutely understand what this process of being bad, of being treated as a bad child could feel like than to force me to ALSO experience this reality?

Of course making someone feel as badly as we do is NOT what the process of empathy is about.  I think about a story my mother used to tell from her young adulthood.  She went horseback riding one summer’s day and happened to be on a misbehaved horse that she evidently lacked the skill to control.  The horse wanted to be in the barn, and solved its problem by racing across a meadow directly under the low lying branch of a tree.  The end result, predictably, was that mother landed on the ground and the horse returned home.

My mother used this experience as a reason that none of her children should ever ride horse.  But more importantly, I want to use this event as an example of bizarre empathy potential.  What if my mother needed to know that somebody else could directly empathize with what that ‘being knocked from the back of an out-of-control horse’ felt like to her?  What if the only way she could guarantee that someone else could empathize with her was by reenacting the same event?

What if she had the power to place her child, say me, upon the back of a similar run-away horse and recreate the experience for me — so that I might exactly know what she felt like on the day it happened to her?  When I look at my mother’s interactions with me from this perspective, I could say that she knew EXACTLY how her treatment of me made me feel.

This is twisted.  There is no better word I can think of than twisted to describe how a mind could work like this.  But twisted my mother’s mind was in regard to me – completely, fundamentally and absolutely.  I would say the same thing about the perpetrator of maltreatment of any helpless victimized infant-child.  At the same time, now that this strange perspective has entered my thinking about what my mother did to me, I understand that my thinking might be absolutely correct.

To the degree that she retained within her own unconscious the terror, pain, misery, helpless hopelessness, and feeling of being overwhelmed as a victimized child (if, in fact, she was – we will never know her true infant-childhood circumstances completely), she certainly communicated to me through her treatment of me what it was like to grow a body-brain-mind-self that included abuse experiences that created similar feelings within me.  She worked very hard to make sure that I felt as terrible as was humanly possible, and she did a very good job.

My mother’s pattern of interacting with me was, of course, the opposite from the definition of empathy as “an emotional and behavioral response to another’s emotional state, which is similar in affective tone and is based on the other’s circumstances rather than one’s own.”  Her only concern was for her OWN experience.  She was not remotely concerned with mine as a separate ‘other’.  She never recognized that I even existed as a person or had my own ‘circumstances’, let alone was separate and different from her self.

My mother’s patterns fit the extreme end of what these authors (below) describe as ‘anti-empathy’.  Whether or not she intended it, my mother certainly communicated to me what it felt like to be an abused child, just as my father communicated to me what it felt like to be a dismissed and avoided child.  As we continue to reenact with others the patterns of attachment that were built into us through our earliest caregiver interactions, we correspondingly ‘help’ others to know how we felt being the recipient of those same attachment experiences our self.  (Be sure to take a look at the EMPATHY MATRIX below.)

NOTE:  When I fell in love with a man that some people might say is like my father, what I now recognize is that they share the similar avoidant-dismissive attachment pattern/disorder that I am extremely familiar with – and that I resonate with!  It is, thus, the attachment pattern that I internally and automatically recognize.  Otherwise, as people, they are far different from one another.  Did I unconsciously recognize this dismissive-avoidant attachment pattern because the feelings created inside myself in response to it are identical between the two relationships?

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Today I am presenting information from an article about how early caregiver attachment experiences intertwine with the later ability or disability to experience true empathy.  This article is about ground breaking research on how empathy can be seen to operate within preschooler interactions.  These empathy patterns persist over time.  They do not appear out of nowhere.

For those of us who suffered from abuse, trauma and maltreatment in our infant-childhoods, this information can help us to understand the empathy process that we were prevented from benefiting from when we needed it most – as our body-brain-mind was forming patterns of attachment into our growing and developing self.  (All bold type and underlining is mine, my notes are in italics)

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“Individual Differences in Empathy Among Preschoolers:  Relation to Attachment History” — By Roberta Kestenbaum, Ellen A. Farber, L. Alan Sroufe, in New Directions for Child Development, Vol 44, 1989, 51-64

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EMPATHY

“The ability to express emotions clearly,

to recognize others’ expressions of emotions,

and to react appropriately to them

are all important for accurate communication and regulation of relationships.  (Kestenbaum/ID/51)”

“…what an individual comes to understand about emotions in the self and others in early relationships may have an impact on later responding to emotional reactions of others.  (Kestenbaum/ID/51)”

EMPATHIC RESPONSE to “another’s emotional state”

“…recognizing and experiencing the emotion of the other.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“Individuals who in the past have had their emotional needs met (for example, through a caretaker’s sensitive and consistent responding) may be better attuned to the emotional needs of others

without confusing them with their own needs,

thus allowing for a truly empathic response.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

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“affective perspective taking”

cognitive orientation

“empathy as the knowledge or understanding of another’s feelings.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“affective perspective taking is necessary but not sufficient for empathy  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

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empathy defined also “in strictly affective terms, as a vicarious affective response.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

COMBINING THE TWO APPROACHES ABOVE:

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“…in essence, both cognitive and affective elements are involved in this response.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

DEFINITION:

AUTHORS’ DEFINITION:

“…an emotional and behavioral response to another’s emotional state, which is similar in affective tone and is based on the other’s circumstances rather than one’s own.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

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“…empathy is defined as

being able to discriminate the affective states of others, knowing how another feels, and vicariously experiencing the aroused emotion (Feshback, 1982; Underwood and Moore, 1982).

Similarly, Iannotti (1978) has defined empathy as an emotional response to the perspective of another.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“Hoffman (1978) suggests a broad definition of empathy, with the major criterion being that the individual’s affective response is more suited to the other individual’s situation than to his or her own circumstances.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

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[author mentions “emotional contagion” without clarifying how it can “contaminate” (my word) the response of empathy]

“Another issue is whether, for a response to be empathic, an exact match of affect should be required or only a match to positive or negative tone…..Some responses, particularly those by young children, may be excluded not because of insufficient arousal, but because of immature cognitive and motoric abilities to produce an exact match.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“This investigation is concerned with how the quality of early relationships predicts later responding to emotional distress….relationship experiences are internalized and carried forward to other relationships.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“The present study was undertaken to look at later effects of early relationships and to compare children who had secure attachment histories with children who had avoidant and resistant attachments.  Infants were tested at twelve and eighteen months of age with their mothers in the Ainsworth Strange Situation.  They were classified as securely attached, anxiously attached-avoidant, or anxiously attached-resistant.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“Because securely attached children presumably have had their emotional needs met as infants and have received responsive, empathic caregiving, they should have developed the capacity to readily respond empathically.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“In Bowlby’s (1973) terms, in the context of early relationship experiences, infants and young children develop inner working models of self and other.  This is more than the learning of roles; rather, children internalize the very nature of relationships themselves.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

SECURLY ATTACHED

“Thus, in experiencing sensitive caregiving, the securely attached child not only learns to expect care, but more generally learns that when a person is in need, another responds empathically.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT

“In sharp contrast, children who show avoidant patterns of attachment are thought to have experienced repeated rejection in times of emotional need….though they may become aroused at another’s distress, they will have no framework for responding adequately.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“They may defend against the feelings that are aroused.  Thus, avoidant children are most likely to appear unempathic, at times displaying attacking behavior or (Kestenbaum/ID/54) inappropriate affect.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

ANXIOUS-RESISTANT ATTACHMENT

“…children who have anxious-resistant attachment histories are thought to have experienced inconsistent care.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

“In the face of strong feelings, they remain anxious, confused, and uncertain.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

“They may show arousal and some responsivity, but because of their disorganization and anxiety, they have difficulty acting empathically.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

“Due to problems in maintaining distance between themselves and others, they may be confused as to who is experiencing the distress.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

In this study:

“Empathy was measured in naturally occurring situations of distress during free play in a preschool setting….we chose to focus only on reactions to others’ distress….Children’s responses to others’ distress were rated for the

degree of empathic responding.  To more clearly delineate differences between the groups, we also included

measures of inappropriate affective responding (anti-empathy) and

occurrences of blurring the boundaries between what is happening to another and what is happening to the self.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

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EMPATHY MATRIX

Matrix, matron and matter are all related to Latin word “matre”

Thirteen Things to Think About:

WHEN INTERACTING WITH HER INFANT

+ 1.  Degree of accurate versus inaccurate perception of infant’s feelings by the mother.  Projection of her feelings onto the infant is a form of inaccurate perception.

+ 2.  Degree of accuracy of the mother’s perception and consciousness of her own feelings

+ 3.  Degree that the mother can set her own feelings aside when interacting with infant

+ 4.  Degree of accurate versus inaccurate perception of infant’s needs.  Projecting her needs onto the infant is a form of inaccurate perception.

+ 5.  Degree of accuracy of mother’s perception and consciousness of her own needs

+ 6.  Degree that mother can set her own needs aside when interacting with infant

+ 7.  Degree of genuine yet exaggerated-staged quality of emotional reaction in response to a young infant.  (This playful way is what an infant needs to grow its brain correctly.)

+ 8.  Degree of literal quality of emotional reaction in response to a young infant (Young infants cannot tolerate a direct and literal response to their feelings.  This response overwhelms and scares them.  I am not using literal to mean the same thing as genuine.)

+ 9.  Degree of appropriateness of response (expectations – whose need/emotion is it?)

+ 10.  Degree of intent to help – safe/benevolent

+ 11.  Degree of intent to harm – threat/malevolent.  Projection of an ulterior motive onto the infant that it has the intention of harassing the parent in any way is harmful.

+ 12.   Degree of availability and accessibility to infant (investment – attention – two edged sword if the interactions are traumatic and threatening).

+ 13.  Degree of consistency and dependability to infant (builds trust and hope or chronic fear)

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[Due to the condition of my mother’s mind, she never had a genuine interaction with any of her children.  Everything my mother thought, did or felt was from the “pretend mode” thinking place as she never left the magical world of her early childhood.

She could not, therefore, experience empathy with anyone.

I don’t think there is anyway to “fix” this.  It might be like color blindness.  If we don’t have empathy, don’t have mindsight, don’t have the ability to mentalize, it’s like not being able to see the color red.  And if a person is color blind, they cannot become a military pilot.  They must do something else.  And that something else might be “choice therapy.”]

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Mean age of the 24 children in the study, split equally between girls and boys, was 48.7 months.  Children were part of a longitudinal study at the University of Minnesota.

[I note that they never mention insecure disorganized attachment.  Did those mothers not participate in the overall study]

B – securely attached

A – anxious-avoidant

C – anxious-resistant

“When they were twelve months old and eighteen months old, they participated with their mothers in the Ainsworth Strange Situation to assess the quality of the mother-infant interaction.  In this procedure, the infant has the opportunity to explore a novel situation with and without the mother present, and with and without a stranger present.  Based primarily upon behaviors when the child is reunited with his or her mother after brief separations, the children are classified into one of three groups.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

“Securely attached (B) infants respond positively to mother’s reappearance and can use the other as a source of comfort if distressed.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

“Anxious-avoidant (A) infants actively avoid their mothers when they return and do not respond differentially to mother and stranger.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

“Anxious-resistant (C) children become very distressed during separations but on reunion are not readily calmed.  They often show anger but resist efforts to comfort them.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

[they have a table of empathy and anti-empathy scales used to score the children on p. 57]

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teacher’s reports:

items that “form a coherent factor, named empathic relatedness (Kestenbaum/ID/58)”

– Is considerate and thoughtful of other children.

– Is helpful and cooperative.

– Shows concern for moral issues (for example, reciprocity, fairness, and the welfare of others)

– Uses and responds to reason

– Tends to arouse liking and acceptance in adults

– Shows a recognition of the feelings of others; is empathic

– Tends to give, lend, and share

– Can be trusted; is dependable.

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“There were few responses of anti-empathy, but of the twelve that were observed, nine incidents were by children with anxious-avoidant attachment histories, two incidents were by children with anxious-resistant attachment histories, and one incident was by a child with a secure attachment history.  (Kestenbaum/ID/59)”

“Six instances were observed in which children appeared to blur the boundaries of who was transgressed.  Of these, four involved children with anxious-resistant attachment histories, and two involved children with secure attachment histories.  (Kestenbaum/ID/59)”

measured children in distress

“…behavioral responses, such as approach or vocalizations of concern, were observed much more often than emotional response…..Thus, it is still not clear what the relation is between affective and behavioral indexes of empathy.  (Kestenbaum/ID/59)”

“…teachers can capture affective-behavioral dimensions of empathy in the Q sort.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

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“…if prototypic models of self, other, and relationships are forged in early attachment experiences, it is expectable that children experiencing responsive care not only will be able to seek care later, but will be emotionally responsive to others as well. (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

“…we consider this work on empathy to be strong confirmation of Bowlby’s theory.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

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“It could be argued that the empathic behavior that we are seeing is a product of current parenting.

Bowlby’s theory states explicitly that development is always a product of past history and current circumstances.

Yet an infant that does not experience empathy gets a different brain.

If a child’s circumstances had changed dramatically, an early history of secure attachment would not guarantee empathic responsiveness.

And yet their brain did form secure circuits.

In this sense, early secure attachment is not seen as causing later empathy.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

Nonetheless, early attachment assessments are viewed as reflecting a developmental process commonly associated with individual differences in empathy.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

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“The quality of the attachment relationship in infancy was indeed related to empathic responding in preschoolers.  Specifically, children with secure attachment histories were  more likely to have a greater empathic response (behaviorally and emotionally) to another’s distress than were children with avoidant histories.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

“How an individual is accustomed to interacting with early relationships, particularly with a caregiver, will be carried forward as expectations in later relationships.  This creates a self-perpetuating cycle [expectations] in which an individual who expects to interact with others in the same (Kestenbaum/ID/60) way as in previous relationships creates a situation that will realize that expectation.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

creates a situation that will realize that expectation –[ I don’t see how they are explaining this part of things.  The children here reacted to situations as they existed.  They did not create them.]

“Thus, children with secure attachment histories have in the past received consistent, sensitive caregiving in times of distress.  These children come to develop a sense of trust and identify with caregivers who respond empathically toward them.  Because their own emotional needs are presumably satisfied, they develop the capacity to respond emotionally, sensitively, and empathically toward others in later relationships.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

“Children with avoidant attachment histories, on the other hand, experienced rejection from their caregivers in times of emotional need.  Without an empathic model to identify with, they are less capable of responding appropriately to another’s distress.  [This is more than having a model – these patterns of responding and processing information are built into the brain circuitry of these children!] As infants, they did not experience consistent emotional support, and later in life, they do not seek it.  Accustomed to avoiding emotions [and this related to their bodies also.  Is this a form of dissociation?] , they continue to do so in later relationships, by not responding emotionally or by responding inappropriately.  Of the twelve incidents of anti-empathy observed in this study, nine were by children with avoidant histories.  The differences observed between the secure group and the avoidant group are probably not due to differences in cognitive abilities such as affective perspective taking, since responding maliciously also requires the ability to realize that another person is experiencing emotional distress.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

“As infants, resistant children had trouble being comforted, and it was expected that as preschoolers they would continue to have difficulties controlling their own affect.  Based on their past histories of inconsistent, ambivalent relationships, it was predicted that children with anxious-ambivalent [they are being inconsistent with their labels here] attachment histories would be

too preoccupied with their own discomfort to react as empathically as the secure group or as unempathically

as the avoidant group.  Statistically, however, the resistant group could not be differentiated from either of the other two groups on present measures of empathy, though their average score fell between those of the other two groups, as predicted.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

IMPORTANT

“Although the anxious-resistant group could not be differentiated by empathy measures, the observations of children who seemed to have

trouble separating another’s distress from their own suggest a more appropriate way of beginning to distinguish this group.  Although only six instances occurred of children

appearing to blur the boundaries of who was experiencing distress, four of them were by children with anxious-resistant attachment histories.  If anxious-resistant children have more

difficulty differentiating between the self’s and other’s emotional states, they will experience the other’s emotional state as their own personal distress and be

less likely to respond empathically…..

Behaviors indicating boundary problems, such as seeking comfort from teachers when another is distressed, should be explored more fully.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

need to “look at the extent of the blurring as well as the cognitive aspects of differentiating the self from other  (Kestenbaum/ID/62)”  — suggestions for future research

It would seem that this is all tied to their preoccupation with their own discomfort.

This would cause them to have difficulties separating another’s distress from their own.

I would suggest that there is a direct link between their inconsistent experiences and this boundary blurring, as well as with the preoccupation.

Because of their preoccupation and blurred boundaries, they will not SEE another’s distress —  so similar to the avoidant group, there would be nothing to respond TO.

– communication patterns and rhythms.

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