Empathy

A surprising, sweeping, and deeply researched history of empathyfrom late-nineteenth-century German aesthetics to mirror neurons Empathy: A History tells the fascinating and largely unknown story of the first appearance of empathy in 1908 and tracks its shifting meanings over the following century. Despite the words ubiquity today, few realize that it began as a translation of Einfhlung (in-feeling), a term in German psychological aesthetics that described how spectators projected their own feelings and movements into objects of art and nature. Remarkably, this early conception of empathy transformed into its opposite over the ensuing decades. Social scientists and clinical psychologists refashioned empathy to require the deliberate putting aside of ones feelings to more accurately understand anothers. By the end of World War II, interpersonal empathy entered the mainstream, appearing in advice columns, popular radio and TV, and later in public forums on civil rights. Even as neuroscientists continue to map the brain correlates of empathy, its many dimensions still elude strict scientific description. This meticulously researched book uncovers empathys historical layers, offering a rich portrait of the tension between the reach of ones own imagination and the realities of others experiences.