I just received my hard copies of a new book called THROUGH YOUR EYES: RESEARCH AND NEW PERSPECTIVES ON EMPATHY, edited by Prof. Sara Ventura of the University of Valencia, Spain, with chapters by scholars in Spain Portugal, Argentina, Turkey, China, the US, and the UK and published by IntechOpen. Here’s the book cover and abstract of my chapter”
Chapter 8
Perspective Chapter: Through Empathizing to Co-Constructing Uniquenesses
John Stewart
Abstract
The traditional understanding of empathy as the capacity to sense and respond appropriately to another’s thinking and feeling effaces two related features of the important human events that his term attempts to name: their interpersonal nature and their culturally situated quality. Recent conceptual revisions helpfully respond to these effacements and position researchers to address a third feature of both traditional and revised versions of the construct; namely, empathy’s dependence on similarity. I address this feature here. I argue that empathy’s dependence on similarity makes it the penultimate rather than the decisive interpersonal event enabling humans to establish and maintain social and personal relations. Close relationships foreground not just similarities identified with the help of empathy but also differences; i.e., uniquenesses that are situation-specific and co-constructed in verbal/nonverbal talk.
After describing what is meant by “co-,” “constructed,” and “uniquenesses,” I use close readings of three actual conversations to display how this process unfolds and to argue for the efficacy and utility of supplementing one’s focus on empathizing with close attention to how conversation partners co-construct uniquenesses.
Keywords: empathy, co-constructing uniquenesses, interpersonal communication, dialog, intimacy, relationship development, close reading, conversation
If you’re interested in reading the chapter without buying the book, you can download it free: http://: https://www.intechopen.com/online-first/1174077
