Despite many attempts to find the universal definition of emotional sharing or compassion, academicians are still not in agreement regarding the difference between sympathy and empathy of the compassion family. In this chapter, I attempt to differentiate theoretically commonly used words from the ‘compassion’ family using the proposed 5-Stage perspective.
Identifying a definition of empathy that shares consensus has proven challenging, with scholars from various disciplines, including psychology, anthropology, aesthetics, phenomenology, philosophy, and neuroscience, unable to reconcile the differences in meaning or context. Drawing on her field research in Pere on the island of Manus, Papua New Guinea, anthropologist Margaret Mead observed that children learned from an adult or older child by imitation and identification, or empathy in a more global sense of the term (Mead, 1964).
In The descent of man (1871/2011), Charles Darwin claimed that sympathy is the distinctive feature of humanity and other animals. Reasons for his argument in favor of the evolution of sympathy for humanity were further clarified as follows:
As man advances in civilization and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies from extending to the men of all nations and races. (Darwin, 1871/2011, p. 78)
When Sigmund Freud in the 1890s first defined projection as “a process of ascribing one’s drives, feelings, and sentiments to other people or the outside world as a defensive process that permits one to be aware of these ‘undesirable’ phenomena in oneself” (as cited in Arnheim, 1986) the German psychologist Theodor Lipps (1903) recognized “Einfuhlung,” as being translated into “empathy” in the U.S. by Edward Titchener in 1909 (as cited in Arnheim, 1986). Lipps (1906) claimed, “All this is empathy, the transfer of myself into others. The foreign individuals of whom I know are objectified multiplications of my own self” (as cited in Arnheim, 1986, p. 54). He argued that “even the facial expression of joy or boredom perceived in another person is nothing but an imposition on the part of the observer” (Lipps, 1906, as cited in Arnheim, 1986, p. 54).
Hastorf and Bender (1952) demonstrated that projection and empathy are different and claimed that projection was personal and concerned with the self, while empathy was objective, cognitive, and truly perceptive. They viewed different abilities among people in terms of emotional understanding and empathy. In other words, they include objectivity, cognitive reasoning, and perceptiveness in empathy as opposed to personal and self-orientation in projection.
Freud (1922/1959) defined identification as “the earliest and original form of an emotional tie” (p. 48) that leads to empathy ‘by way of imitation’ or ‘mental infection,’ “based upon the possibility or desire of putting oneself in the same situation” (p. 49). He claimed that “identification only borrows a single trait from the person who is its object -choice” (p. 48). Freud (1899/1955) later introduced the concept of sympathy or hysterical identification in his analysis of dreams while discussing “the capacity of hysterics to imitate any symptoms in other people” not as “simple imitation but assimilation based on a similar aetiological pretension (p. 183). In this way, he distinguished between ‘what one would like to be’ and ‘what one would like to have.’ Freud (1922/1959) also distinguished ‘empathy [Einfuhlung]’ as an “understanding of what is inherently foreign to our ego in other people”(p. 50).
Since Freud (1922/1959) introduced the concept of identification, sympathy, and empathy as the unconscious motives for emotional investment, following their respective emotional stages, ranging from fear, denial, guilt, and emotional independence, empathy has been an ongoing topic of debate among psychoanalysts (Clarke, 2001) such as Melanie Klein (1952), Bion (1962), Ogden (1990), Rothenberg (1988), Sandler (1987), Rosenfeld (1988), Gedo (2005), and Young (1994). In this regard, Melanie Klein (1952) used the term “projected identification” to explain the violent, primitive form of aggressive, emotional interaction between the mother and the infant, while Bion (1962) explained empathy as the communicative activities guiding the thinking and tolerance of frustration between the container and the contained (as cited in Clarke, 2001). On the other hand, Ogden (1990) saw manipulation and coercion as the main interpersonal function of projective identification. Viewing psychotherapy as a creative homo-spatial process that uses empathy, Rothenberg (1988) distinguished the therapist’s empathy, which involves understanding and sharing feelings, from identification through imitation, cognitive understanding, and sympathy, which means sharing others’ feelings. He emphasized the therapist’s role as an awareness of their own separateness from the patient with a well-developed sense of self-boundaries (p. 56-63).
The proposed 5-stage model predicts that empathy skills depend on the degree of emotional investment or cathexis, which may vary depending on the individual’s stage of emotional development. The latter would be: fear and repressed anger in Stage 1, aggressive expression of anger, shame, and denial in Stage 2, repressed guilt in Stage 3, emotional independence in Stage 4, and empathy in Stage 5. People at Stages 1, 3, and 5 may be more willing to invest in emotionally understanding others. In contrast, individuals in Stages 2 and 4 may display a less emotional but more logical and cognitive understanding of others. Investments in logic and reasoning may involve dialectic confrontation with uncontrolled or excessive emotionality, while investments in emotions involve dialectic confrontation with the disconnection from emotion in the preceding stages.
However, the degree of accuracy in reading others’ feelings may increase from low to high, depending on the stages and the degree of their emotional independence, as opposed to their unconscious level of projection, denial, introjection, and emotional independence.
Table 3E. The current 5-Stage model’s interpretation of empathy
| Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Stage 5 | |
| The current model’s integrated understanding of empathy drawn from psychoanalytic theories | Projective identification of fear; projection based on phantasy or internal object and distortion (Sandler, 1987; Young 1994; Segal, 1964 cited in Clarke) | Projective identification of shame and anger; Denial | Projective identification of anxiety and feeling of guilt; Introjection Contained (Bion, 1962, as cited in Clarke, 2001) | Emotional boundaries | Emotional sharing |
| Intrapsychic | Intersubjective | ||||
| Identification | Pity | Sympathy | Emotional Independence | Empathy |
Therefore, empathy may be viewed as a multi-purpose tool that depends on the utilizer’s conscious and unconscious intention and their stage of emotional development, as with predators finding a target for attack, mothers detecting infants’ needs, or therapists providing emotional support. Emotional understanding or empathy in Eastern collectivist cultures, represented in Korean using the word Jeong or in Japanese using the term Amae, may play a similar role in understanding the feelings of “instant emotional fusion” within the culture, although its meaning and nuance may vary cross-culturally. People in East Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Japan report their unique heart-to-heart feeling or empathy as instant fusion among themselves, even strangers, within their cultures. Jeong in Korea for instant emotional fusion or breaking down boundaries and Amae in Japan for wanting to be dependent and cared for are examples of empathy (Chung & Cho, 2006; Doi, 1973).
Table 3F below illustrates how possible purposes for empathy translate across each level of emotional development.
Table 3F. Positive and Negative use of empathy at various stages
| Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Stage 5 | |
| Positive use | Identification / Instant Fusion / Caring/ Imitating | Pity/ Mirroring/ Copying/ Admiring | Sympathy/ Sacrifice / Thoughtfulness | Objective/ Unbiased assessment/ Respect | Empathy |
| Negative use | Rejection / Attack/ Bullying/ Fear-inducing/ Threatening | Apathy/ Uncaring/ Shame/ Detachment/ Rebellion/ Exploit | Judgement/ Avoidance/ Guilt-inducing | Indifference |
The widespread consensus among researchers on the development and usage of compassion and empathy in human civilization represents evidence supporting the 5-Stage Theory of empathy, which claims that the ability to have compassion for others is affected by the person’s emotional development. Compassion exhibits itself through identification or projection in Stage 1, pity or apathy in Stage 2, sympathy in Stage 3, emotional indifference in Stage 4, and empathy in Stage 5. In other words, the most mature version of empathic understanding may only be possible for those who reach the Stage 5 level of emotional or personality development.