Tag: comprehension

Empathic Experience

In the past few days, I’ve posted the three levels of empathic experience according to Edith Stein, going through them one by one. I attempted to have a broad presentation about them. Here, I’ll summarize the three levels.

Empathic experience is not merely an awareness of the emotional states of other people. Rather, it goes through levels, which would mean that it is a lived experience. With empathy, I live through the experience of the other.

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay

A Summary of the Three Levels

The first level is empathic awareness. This is the start of any empathic experience. In here, I have an awareness of what the other individual is feeling. But if I follow through the other’s lead, then the experience will advance to the second level.

The second level is empathic fulfillment. This is the apex of any empathic experience. What happens here is that I would be “at” the place of the other individual, making myself as if the other. Intimacy builds here. And when this is complete, the experience advances to the third level.

The third level is empathic comprehension. This is the final phase of any empathic experience. In here, I have a relatively comprehensive knowledge of the experience of the other individual. In this level, I recognize that my experience is foreign.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Example

Here is one example of how these three levels play out:

While walking into the hallway of the school, I saw my friend. She was sitting on the bench, but with all smiles while reading a book. Right there and then, I knew that she’s happy (empathic awareness). I was about to walk past her because I knew that I shouldn’t disturb her.

But she was able to glance at me. She called me over while she closed the book. I could tell that her eyes were filled with joy. I sat beside her and she told me about what happened that made her elated. As I listened, I was able to understand her joy as if I was her in the situation (empathic fulfillment). I understood that she and her parents were okay now, and that they were able to hug each other.

Then after a while, I was able to “get to my senses” and comprehended her joy and the reason for that joy (empathic comprehension). I recognized that it was her unique experience. I was not living my own experience, but hers.

Then, someone called her name. It was her sister. So, she said bye.

Empathic Comprehension

In an empathic experience, I become aware of a unique experience through empathic awareness. Then, being led by this experience, I experience an intimate connection through empathic fulfillment. And when this is finished, a new level commences, which I call empathic comprehension.

For Edith Stein, there are three (3) levels of empathic experience. This would mean that empathy lets the subject go through a unique experience, so unique that Stein would say that it is sui generis.

Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

Empathic Comprehension

The third, and final, level of empathic experience is the “comprehensive objectification of the explained experience.” This refers to a comprehension of the unique experience of empathy. What happens here is that the subject has finished grasping the other’s experience and therefore recognize it as foreign. In other words, it is the completion of empathy where I recognize the experience as the other’s experience.

Only at this level that I become aware of the non-primordiality of the experience (i.e. the experience is not mine all along). Of course, Stein would say that there is never a fusion of the two subjects (i.e. they do not become one and the same). Nevertheless, the recognition of alterity in an empathic experience happens only at this level.

This level, thus, lets the subject return to how it was in the first level. In the first level, the subject faces the object and connects with it through empathy. Here at the third level, the subject faces the object again, but with a new kind of objectification: a comprehensive understanding of the situation of the other.

Empathic Comprehension In Practice

What does this level look like in practice?

In practice, it looks like this: when after you have “put yourself in the other’s shoes,” you as if say to yourself, “That is his problem, not mine” (of course, not in an insensitive way). There is just, thus, a recognition that the experience that you have undergone through empathy (the second level) is not yours but the other’s.

It is, then, just like coming to your senses.

P.S. A disclosure: “empathic comprehension” is my term as I describe the third level of empathic experience.

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