Empathy requires that we allow another person to remain more complicated than our first interpretation of them, but certainty can close off this possibility. Once I am certain that I know who you are, there is nothing left for me to discover about you. You have ceased to be a person I encounter and become an object I classify.
Tag: #Ethics
The Ethics of Attention in the Therapy Room
After writing about what I called the ethics of attention, I would like to explore how these ideas appear in the therapy room. The philosophical questions I wrote about two weeks ago are not abstract there. They have faces. They have names, stories, and hopes. They sit across from me, sometimes carrying burdens that have… Continue reading The Ethics of Attention in the Therapy Room
The Ethics of Attention
A person incapable of sustained attention cannot truly encounter another person. To them, the afflicted become abstractions. The poor become statistics. The refugee becomes a political argument. The dead schoolchildren become one image among countless others, possessing no greater claim upon us than entertainment.
Hope is a Stand Against Despair
Many of us are experiencing it right now with the chaotic rollout of policies aimed at inflicting pain on the most vulnerable in our society. When dark moments like this loom, choosing hope is an act of resistance. It is a stance against despair.
Roque Neto 