IMHO, no. Ethicals are supposed to feel sympathy and be loving whereas logicals are supposed to be mean, selfish, save-asses. I don't think that is true. It depends on the person
IMHO, no. Ethicals are supposed to feel sympathy and be loving whereas logicals are supposed to be mean, selfish, save-asses. I don't think that is true. It depends on the person
ILE "Searcher"
Socionics: ENTp
DCNH: Dominant --> perhaps Normalizing
Enneagram: 7w6 "Enthusiast"
MBTI: ENTJ "Field Marshall" or ENTP "Inventor"
Astrological sign: Aquarius
To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach.
Fe, I think. All that matters is the pure emotional content in that moment; not an attitude towards the person or anything lasting.
That said, I don't think that Fe types are necessarily more empathetic. Depends on the individual.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
ILE "Searcher"
Socionics: ENTp
DCNH: Dominant --> perhaps Normalizing
Enneagram: 7w6 "Enthusiast"
MBTI: ENTJ "Field Marshall" or ENTP "Inventor"
Astrological sign: Aquarius
To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach.
To "put oneself into another's shoes" is very characteristic for me. I think NF's in general share this trait. Ni + Fe or Ne + Fi.
If id have to pick just one function I would probably pick Fe but that alone I don't think is enough.
Looking for an Archnemesis. Willing applicants contact via PM.
ENFp - Fi 7w6 sp/sx
The Ineffable IEI
The Einstein ENTp
johari nohari
http://www.mypersonality.info/ssmall/
You are right, I have mixed things.
How do we call empathetic people who have no qualms about exploiting others?
Anyway, I insist some I*Fps lack empathy: most of them believe the world turns around them and only think about their ass. Sometimes, I question my own type because of that.
ILE "Searcher"
Socionics: ENTp
DCNH: Dominant --> perhaps Normalizing
Enneagram: 7w6 "Enthusiast"
MBTI: ENTJ "Field Marshall" or ENTP "Inventor"
Astrological sign: Aquarius
To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach.
Looking for an Archnemesis. Willing applicants contact via PM.
ENFp - Fi 7w6 sp/sx
The Ineffable IEI
The Einstein ENTp
johari nohari
http://www.mypersonality.info/ssmall/
I think empathy is a basic component of having a mind or what have you. We empathisize easiest with those we understand. Using the mother example from a few posts above... your mother doesn't understand your tendency to live in books, therefor has a hard time empathising with you over it. She can however easily empathise with other mothers etc. who have the same feelings about their kids who live in their books. On the other hand, you have a hard time empathising with your mother and those others who feel as she does, while being able to easily empathise with those other kids who are doing as you, living in their books. Neither one is necessarily better or worse at empathy in general, they just empathise towards the emotions brought on by different sorts of actions and experiences.Empathy is the capability to share and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes," or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.
If you must bring types and functions into it, all it's going to highlight is in what ways and with who a person is going to be able to most naturally empathise with.
I have to say it's not type related to feel empathy. If I HAD to associate a function, I'd say Fi is empathy, but that might come from a personal bias. I'm described as I highly empathic person, and I try to understand a people and their situations. I agree with bionic, everyone has their own way of being empathic. Ethical types might be more aware of the use of empathy, and therefore exercise it more often and gain skill at it, but logical types have their own way of being empathic.
It comes from some level of intuitive guess work, but it also from noticing people's behaviors and being inquisitive about feelings as a knee-jerk reaction to everything. It sounds scary that there are people who feel like they know you before you think that they have any idea about your personality, but I can say for myself I can just read people and guess. I have to get to know them at some sort of level, of course, but it's to the point where my close friends don't really second-guess my observations. I want to reply later with a more thought out answer, but I have to say that while it may seem out there, a high level of empathy might not be over-estimated.
Last edited by Mattie; 04-10-2009 at 02:43 PM.
Yeah, I can imagine what other person could be feeling. But I have somewhat poor understading what they are actually feeling, in a more complex level, that I assume Fe-egos are capable of. I of course have rudimentary understading of what other person is feeling, so I'm not like a freakshow of not understading other peoples feelings. What I imagine someone could be feeling and what they are actually feeling can in practice be different. Most of the time I just don't concentrate or care about this type of information.
Greater difficulty comes in trying to influence other peoples emotions, there I'm very underskilled.
...the human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'.
INTp
I think there is a sense of type relation relating to what we are talking about, if socionics.com is any good, I will quote this
ENFp positive trait description
Your strongest virtue is well-developed intuition. This allows you to faultlessly determine the hidden abilities and talents in others, which you accurately point out or compliment them upon. You also try to help people understand their personal problems, often trying to help people feel more positive about them. Your first impression of people is usually the right one. You are able to maintain warm, trusting relations with people. Your feelings for others, both positive and negative are as strong as each other. You are a top class diplomat. You try to help others using your diplomatic abilities to find solutions to often difficult life situations. You help people to avoid humiliation and making hasty decisions that they might later regret.
I can agree with that description, and I do understand that type does reflect these traits. What I don't agree with is Fe = empathy, because to me personally, NeFi "obviously" is empathy, or at least empathy in my own manner. If anything, I feel like it's both Fe and Fi, they are two sides to empathy. Maybe Fe is the actual observation and Fi is the understanding? Which makes ethical types good at empathy in how we're talking about it here, but in different ways. I feel rather fired up about this subject for some strange reason, like it just hit a chord
You are probably on to something with this. But Fe is more than that. Consider that Fe would be a interface between you and the world. Empathy = the Fe-input. But there's also the output, to add to that. The Fe-output is what Fi-valuers often can see as manipulative.
That type of practicality has to do with Si and Se rather than Te.and I worked as a construction worker as a side job while I was a student (don't ask me why - it was well payed....) Still, I guess it's true that Te PoLR makes me relatively clumsy... I have experience, but not natural skill at practical work. I think empathy = Fe, in the same manner practicality = Te. I'd love to hear other arguments.
...the human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'.
INTp
If you're strong in Fi, you're also strong in Fe, and ENFps have Fe as their 8th function, which is a strong producing function. Fe is not a priority for us but it is strong.
I think different types empathize in different ways. For ENFps, i think it's probably a combination of Fe and Fi.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.-Mark Twain
You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
You are probably rather talking about sympathy rather than empathy. But Fi-egos are also skilled in empathy.
For example extreme Ne + Fi sympath would feel how the test-animals, or starving children of africa are suffering. Although it would be imagined, and couldn't get over the feeling.
Extreme empath would "extract" and be immersed by the feelings of people surrounding, similar way as someone listens to music.
Or so I assume.
...the human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'.
INTp
My hunch is it's probably more psychosocial than Socionics.
Personally, I had a block for awhile... That is to say, I wasn't feeling, well, feelings in full -- and like psychological blocks can be, it was caused by build-up of un-dealt with pain.
Me being ENFj, I don't believe, had anything to do with it... Me feeling or not feeling empathy.
only communicates/reads raw emotional content as it's changing through the moments, which allows one to re-create in their mind the internal emotional states flying through anothers mind. I think empathy is far more than just that.
I understand how people are feeling - I rarely "feel" or "experience" how other people are feeling. I can and do put myself in other people's shoes, but it's not something I do instinctively, whereas understanding how people feel and where they are coming from is. That being said, I don't think I'm overly sympathetic. I definitely have the capacity for great sympathy, I'm just... less likely to give it to just anyone? Lol, and I don't mean to sound like I'm stingy with my sympathy. This sounds terrible - I'm really not sure how to put it.
That being said, I don't think empathy is highly type related. Any healthy individual has the capacity for empathy and tbh I don't see the point in over-analyzing it.
How is this empathy? Understanding and "feeling" how someone else is feeling is empathy. Adopting their feelings as your own is not empathy, lol. If anything it shows a weak understanding of your own feelings and and an inability to be assert them when necessary.
I think you are taking this whole being empathetic thing a little too far.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
@ Mimosa: It's not type-related. Honestly, don't attribute things like empathy to Fe. Especially if you're defining it with an excerpt from Wikipedia. The idea of it may seem more Fe-related, but that's a gross simplification to assume.
Anyway, here are some interesting articles on it:
“A basic human impulse affecting the course of history, culture, and personal connections,(The University of Chicago Magazine)
empathy is also a neurological fact—and one that’s increasingly understood.
TO NEUROSCIENTIST JEAN DECETY, empathy resembles a sort of minor constellation: clusters
of encephalic stars glowing in the cosmos of an otherwise dark brain. ‘See how they flash,’ Decety
says, pointing to the orange-lit anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula on an fMRI scan. ‘This
person is witnessing another person in pain. ... What’s interesting is that this network of regions
is also involved in the firsthand experience of pain.’”
“On the other hand, in one sense empathy may be more unique than many people think. Although empathy(http://www2.psychology.su.se/staff/jh/dissertation.pdf)
is often mentioned and grouped together with phenomena such as sympathy, warmth, compassion and so forth,
and naturally have much in common with these phenomena, it is likely the only phenomenon that enables us to
understand as well as care for consciousness outside ourselves.”
“EMPATHY is the idea that the vital properties which we experience in or attribute to any person or object(Dictionary of the History of Ideas)
outside ourselves are the projections of our own feelings and thoughts.”
I agree with each of you. And to be honest, this thread kind of bothers me.
maybe a saint is just a dead prick with a good publicist
maybe tommorow's statues are insecure without their foes
go ask the frog what the scorpion knows
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
.
I think the "neutral skill" you're talking about is ... reading raw emotional content. The sadist is reading something of the emotions of the victim, or interpreting them at least. It's just that I think that this "neutral skill" isn't the same thing as "empathy," even though it can certainly be involved in empathy (and it's not because I think 'empathy can only be positive').
Jung distinguished between passive projection and active projection. Passive projection is completely automatic and unintentional, like falling in love. The less we know about another person, the easier it is to passively project unconscious aspects of ourselves onto them.
Active projection is better known as empathy - we "feel ourselves into the other's shoes". Empathy that extends to the point where we lose our own standpoint becomes identification.
So having too strong empathy can become a problem as Mimosa is saying.
Another aspect of this is the phenomena of "participation mystique" where the subject (you) cannot clearly distinguish yourself from the object (the other person) but is bound to him/her by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity. This is a highly unconscious attitude.
Empathy starts with an unconscious subjective projection onto another person (object), we then introject from the other person into ourselves.
These are all Jungian ideas. See this link for Empathy, Identification and Participation mystique.
The Jung Lexicon by Jungian analyst, Daryl Sharp, Toronto
I have to say I have at times similar problems. I see myself as highly empathic to the point where if I am asked to make a decision on behalf of the other person I at times find myself "lost" where my own will and wants are.
I do wonder if it IS an IEI problem that we are so in tune with other people we lose our own direction at times. Maybe that is part of the reason why SLE's are seen as a good fit for us? I have discussed it with friends before, and then we talked about this as a problem of "boundaries" - that we allow people get too deeply into us in a way ie. we are too identified with them (this was before this interesting discussion, I didn't think of it as related to empathy back then).
Last edited by Wittmont; 04-10-2009 at 08:17 PM.
INFp
If your sea chart does not match reality, go with reality (Old mariner saying)
No, no. It bothers me when someone takes a basic human trait and over-analyzes it into somehow being type-related. I find the idea that intelligence is type-related to be ludicrous as well.
I can't speak for why it bothered Allie, but I'm guessing it's along the same lines, since she agrees that it is not type-related.
So far BG has made the most sense in this thread.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
What do you make of this interesting quote about how Lyndon B. Johnson (SEE most likely, or maybe SLE) summed up people. Did he "read" people or understand them through an empatic point of view?
Eights - the enneagram ...info from the underground
"A good quotation from Lyndon Johnson's biography illustrates enneatype Eight's means of sizing up an individual:
"While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men--a great reader of men. He had a genius for studying a man and learning his strengths and weaknesses and hopes and fears, his deepest strengths and weaknesses: what it was that the man wanted--not what he said he wanted but what he really wanted--and what it was that the man feared, really feared.
"He tried to teach his young assistants to read men--“Watch their hands, watch their eyes” he told them. “Read eyes. No matter what a man is saying to you, it’s not as important as what you can read in his eyes”--and to read between the lines: more interested in men’s weaknesses than in their strengths because it was weakness that could be exploited, he tried to teach his assistants how to learn a man’s weakness. "The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he isn’t telling you,” he said. "The most important thing a man has to say is what he’s trying not to say.” For that reason, he told them, it was important to keep the man talking; the longer he talked, the more likely he was to let slip a hint of that vulnerability he was so anxious to conceal. “That’s why he wouldn’t let a conversation end." Busby explains. “If he saw the other fellow was trying not to say something, he wouldn’t let it (the conversation) end until he got it out of him.” And Lyndon Johnson himself read with a genius that couldn’t be taught, with a gift that was so instinctive that a close observer of his reading habits, Robert G. (Bobby) Baker, calls it a “sense”; "He seemed to sense each man’s individual price and the commodity he preferred as coin.” He read with a novelist’s sensitivity, with an insight that was unerring, with an ability, shocking in the depth of its penetration and perception, to look into a man’s heart and know his innermost worries and desires. (From Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson.)"
Last edited by Wittmont; 04-10-2009 at 09:02 PM.
INFp
If your sea chart does not match reality, go with reality (Old mariner saying)
FTR, I have very little empathy. One of my best friends who is Beta extrovert has very little empathy. Many of the guys I know in OTC have very little empathy (they are probably primarily Beta and Alpha, although I know a few who are probably Gamma SFs and they react badly to some of the unempathic things I say/do).
On the other hand, my mother and her fiancée have a lot of empathy. I think they are both Delta.
Simplistic, typical SLE deduction: Fi = empathy, Fe = no empathy.
empathy is type-related.
This reminds me of something. I know someone with two children. One of them is very serious and I do think he's empathetic, but that's just from noticing how he interacts with his mother. His face is usually largely blank, but sometimes he'll say things like "don't worry, Mommy" to his mother quietly, while tugging on her hand. He picks up on her anxiety that she hardly expresses at all. He seems to analyze all of her behavior, but he doesn't seem like an ethical type to me at all. He's interested in things more than people; he seems like a very logical, methodical child to me (if he's ethical, I would think it's ). But I can tell he empathizes with his mother far better than I do, because he knows her so well... he's been studying her for a long time and he has learned to read all of the nuances in her behavior. He doesn't respond to emotions displayed around him, and seems to largely ignore (or not even notice) most of them. Every now and then he may seem to consider a few of them in silent thought, but mostly he doesn't seem interested... like if someone laughs at him and seems to expect him to react, he seems to have a perplexed "who cares" attitude about it and soon returns to whatever object he was playing with.Originally Posted by Mimosa
The other child is very expressive, constant emotions are playing out all over his face. If you smile at him, he smiles too, in fact he smiles in a way that matches how I was feeling exactly (and it seems he felt this feeling when he smiled). I'm thinking that's exactly the sort of thing you mean, Mimosa? In other words he seems to rather precisely mirror the emotions of those around him. He follows everyone's feelings, they all play out on his face. He is like an emotional mirror. He reacts to everyone's emotions, and he seems to be very happy when others are being emotionally expressive. His face will light up and he'll giggle as people become increasingly expressive. He conveys his own emotions so clearly that people react a lot to his feelings as well. I think he's very empathetic, obviously, and I also wouldn't be surprised if he's leading or creative.
But... If I questioned which child I thought was more 'empathetic', I would think it's the first one actually. Emotions seem more like play to the second child, while the first child so strongly empathizes with his mother, and pays so much attention to her when he's not pre-occupied with things he's curious about, that I can see that he is maintaining a very deep understanding of her. He is a year older than the other child, but I noticed this behavior a year ago as well (not to say these things can't change later).
Imo the first child doesn't identify with his mother at all though (per Wittmont's post)... her feelings don't seem to change his feelings (his feelings seem independent of anyone else's as far as I can tell)... he seems to think more than he seems to feel in general. The second child though... I could easily see him getting caught up in identification with the feelings of others. The world of everyone's feelings seems to be his world, so much so that maybe it would be more difficult to separate himself from it. I could imagine him losing his identity in it and being easily affected by it automatically. I could imagine him allowing it to control how he feels inside because he is so sensitive to it.
I guess this is just more about what do we mean by "empathy", as Mimosa has been saying. The reason I think the first child is more empathetic is because he seems to actually feel deep down what his mother is "going through"... it seems to register deep inside him... where as with the second child it's more this sort of surface level transient thing... but because of the generally playful nature of the second child I can't tell what he feels deeply inside (yet), and I think that will become more apparent as he gets older. (eta: I don't see either of them very often, and I don't *know* either of them deeply, so these are very simple observations.)
I said all this to try to illustrate some of my thinking. I had typed a few arguments but I deleted them because I just didn't think it was working.
You're sweet. I was just in a weird mood earlier. I think I'm overly sensitive to the idea of things being type-related. Maybe it bothers me to think that almost everything could be attributed to type if someone tried? I'm not sure and it's not important.
It does make sense that ethical types would pick up on peoples' moods better than logical types.
I don't believe that IQ tests = intelligence, but I see your point nonetheless.
Yeah, I don't mind when people discuss whatever either, but sometimes I think people make things too personal and then it's just ... weird. But that's my problem, not anyone else's.
And I very much agree with the part that I bolded.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
Share and understand feelings is being empathetic? No. That's a shitty description. Even sociopaths share and understand feelings- they frequently use the emotions of others to get ahead and then misuse them.
Empathy is you literally *feel* what *other* people are feeling. Empathetic people feel other people's feelings as if they are their own. It can be hard for an empathetic person to even know their own feelings.
Also, these types are probably the LEAST likely to be all outwardly 'helpy.' Empaths are usually quite fragile because the amount of feelings other people have in area, and feeling alot of those feelings all at once....can be very brutal and overwhelming, a simple task that's really no big deal is magnified a lot for empaths. They make good private therapists and priests though.
Empaths are also usually very quiet, or if they do talk it's almost always in a very serious/idealistic fashion- because they want to make sure everybody else is happy, as if they're not they will feel miserable themselves. They don't do this out of some selfless concern though, it's more for their own sake.
Also 'empath' is a kind of misnomer. Most everybody has empathetic abilities, especially human beings. It's just to various degrees (there's a wide range between sociopathic bullies and emo artists) ....and depending on the choices, circumstances in your life.
Last edited by Hot Scalding Gayser; 04-11-2009 at 08:00 AM.
But you can psychologically understand and share feelings and still be a cruel, sociopathic asshole- but if you literally *felt* what other people are feeling, how could you be cruel and take advantage of others? Knowing what it's like and feeling what it's like are two diff things. People who commit the most heinous acts against other humans understand the feelings of others VERY well however, they don't give a shit, because they are only worried about their OWN feelings -- or lack thereof.
Why are most people generally nice people that want to help & care for others and not offend people? Because they know that it feels bad if somebody mistreats them. Because if they see somebody get hurt/abused/mistreated, it makes them feel poor as well. Well a criminal/predator somebody who hates humanity, wants to destroy everything and just doesn't give a shit etc. you can still bet that they can understand and intellectualize their feelings, but it's highly unlikely they're literally *feeling* anything at all at that point.
I don't care what a bland dictionary says to be quite frank. Not to be arrogant or anything but dictionaries change all the time, words evolve and such etc.