Dr. Peter Breggin's Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living Newsletter |
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2/28/2012 - Volume 3, Issue 2 |
In This Issue Dr. Bert Karon to Present at the 2012 Empathic Therapy Conference Psychologist Joanne Cacciatore Advocates for Those Affected by Traumatic Loss Award Winning Filmmaker Kevin P. Miller Presents "Beyond Generation Rx-- What's Next?" Psychotropic Medications in Maltreated Children Xanax Facts and Whitney Houston A Clinical Illustration of the Difference Between Empathy and Sympathy Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living EmpathicTherapy.org 1-607-272-5328 Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living 101 East State St. #112 Ithaca, NY 14850 607-272-5328 |
Dear [Contact.First Name], Peter and I are very excited about our upcoming conference and we are introducing just a few of our terrific speakers in this newsletter. The Empathic Therapy Conference is only weeks away now and there are only 200 spots available, so sign up right away! In 2013 our Empathic Therapy Center will not be holding a conference. I am blessed with many exciting and engaging activities including the regular social media work I do via Facebook and Twitter, our newsletters, and many other public education activities. I'm also becoming a grandmother, again! and want to be able to spend time with my grandchildren. We'll be in regular touch in all the other ways but being freed from conference responsibilities will enable me to focus more fully on some other vital areas. So, sign up now for our April 2012 conference! Very best, Ginger Breggin, Editor Psychologist Bert Karon to Present at 2nd Empathic Therapy Conference Our friend, Bert Karon, PhD is a national treasure. He has decades of wisdom and experience working with deeply disturbed patients suffering from psychosis and other torments. Dr. Karon is a retired Professor of Clinical Psychology at Michigan State University. He was the first recipient of the Empathic Therapy Award presented by the Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living. Dr. Karon received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton. He is a former President of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association, and has over 150 publications. He was selected by the Washington School of Psychiatry as the 2001 Fromm-Reichmann memorial lecturer. The US chapter of the International Society for the Psychological treatment of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses gave him their 2002 Award for "profound contributions to our psychoanalytic understanding and humane treatment of patients with severe mental illness." Dr. Karon is the author of The Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia. Dr. Karon authored an important chapter with Leighton C. Whitaker in Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons, (edited by Peter R. Breggin and E. Mark Stern). We are so grateful that Bert is going to come and share once again his knowledge and experiences in working with severely disturbed persons. Bert is able to remind us that every patient is a human being and that each individual needs to be met with empathy, caring, respect and gentleness. Saturday night's special conference event with a conversation between Dr. Bert Karon and Dr. Peter Breggin will be a historical moment. Join us! Psychologist Joanne Cacciatore Advocates for Those Affected by Traumatic Loss Want to know what a real warrior looks like?
Find a person who is truly in mourning and who is able to sit with the ineffable
truth of suffering. Cowards dare not enter that house of pain. Only the
courageous walk barefoot, blindfolded, through the darkness.
Most people, even many psychotherapists, tend to use EMPATHY and SYMPATHY interchangeably, as if those words mean the same thing. In fact, the difference between them has important ramifications for our work: clients often want us to SYMPATHIZE with what they have told us when they may actually need us to EMPATHIZE with feelings they are not consciously expressing. Here are two dictionary definitions from Merriam-Webster: Sympathy: Empathy: While those definitions sound quite similar, the
second introduces the possibility that the experience which we are sharing
may not have been verbally and intentionally communicated to us. As
therapists emotionally attuned to our clients, we may on occasion empathize
with a feeling of which a client is not actually conscious. I believe
this exact experience informs our work more fully than we sometimes recognize;
for the psychodynamic psychotherapist, it lends conviction to interventions
we make when we try to bring an unconscious feeling into awareness.
Let me give a clinical illustration. One of my clients (I'll refer to her as "Stephanie") sought professional help due to severe depression and insomnia, and because she occasionally cut herself with razor blades. She was in her late teens when she started treatment. During one session, she was relating an experience from elementary school which she had recalled. With tears in her eyes and her voice choking up, Stephanie told of several very "mean" children who were torturing a wounded bird they had found on the playground. She appeared to be upset by the memory; from her looks and verbal cues, it was clear to me that she very much wanted me to share and sympathize with her expressed feelings of horror at the cruel behavior of those other children. She could not understand them, she told me, because she had always tried hard to be a good person and would never intentionally hurt a fly. I did not sympathize with Stephanie, however; I
found her tears to be emotionally unpersuasive -- what we sometimes refer
to as "crocodile tears," except that she was not CONSCIOUSLY trying to manipulate
me. Instead, though I didn't fully understand it at that point, I
felt an inkling of her unconscious rage. Sensations in my face
and body gave me the clue; all feelings register somewhere within our body,
and paying close attention to our own physical experience often helps us
to name and understand the feelings with which we are empathizing.
At that time, early in our work together, I couldn't articulate it even
to myself, but I had a strong sense that Stephanie unconsciously felt something
quite different from the feelings she wanted me to share. So in the beginning, Stephanie wanted me to SYMPATHIZE with her somewhat sentimental view of herself as a "good person", thereby supporting defensive attempts to ward off that scary violence inside; in the course of our work, however, I instead came to EMPATHIZE with her unconscious violence and help her to make acquaintance with a split-off part of herself that lay at the root of her troubles. Had I sympathized instead, I would have colluded with her defenses and our work together would have gone nowhere. Joseph Burgo, Ph.D. has practiced psychotherapy
for 30 years, holding licenses as a marriage and family therapist and clinical
psychologist. He earned his undergraduate degree at UCLA and his masters
and doctorate at California Graduate Institute in Los Angeles. As an instructor,
he has taught graduate students in psychology and supervised their training
in community counseling centers. He is also a graduate psychoanalyst and
has served as a board member, officer and instructor at a component society
of the International Psychoanalytic Association. As a writer, he has published
two novels, both works of genre fiction released some time ago and now out
of print. In addition to his
After Psychotherapy website, he co-writes a blog with Marla
Estes called "Movies and Mental Health," hosted on PsychCentral.com.
His forthcoming book on psychological defense mechanisms will be released
by New Harbinger Publications in Spring 2013.
*************** Thanks for reading through our newsletter! Remember to sign up now for the Empathic Therapy Conference, and Dr. Breggin and I look forward to seeing you there. Very best regards, Ginger Breggin, Editor WARNING -- Most psychiatric drugs can cause withdrawal reactions, sometimes including life-threatening emotional and physical withdrawal problems. In short, it is not only dangerous to start taking psychiatric drugs, it can also be dangerous to stop them. Withdrawal from psychiatric drugs should be done carefully under experienced clinical supervision. Methods for safely withdrawing from psychiatric drugs are discussed in Dr. Breggin's books, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2008) and Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008). Peter R. Breggin, MD is no longer affiliated with the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, informally known as ICSPP and now ISEPP, which he founded and led from 1972-2002, and Dr. Breggin is no longer involved in its conferences. Copyright 2011 Peter R. Breggin, MD |
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