Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

We Should All Be Up For An Oscar

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Contact with another demands that we ask “What drives this person?” It’s not just a question; it’s the question. The process of creating a fully developed character does the service of making the answers more transparent. And it’s why drama as an idea is so powerful as a way to account for what others say. Just as an actor may imagine a “back story” that provides the reasons for their visible acts, so do we all fanaticize back stories to find explanations for the behaviors of those we interact with. In this process, art is the perfect condensation of life.

Literary scholar Bert States approaches the essence of characterization from an unusual but revealing perspective. In his perfectly titled Great Reckonings in Little Rooms, he asks us to consider performers in relation to the occasional live animal who is sometimes written in to a script. It’s a useful juxtaposition because it helps us see what is so essential about the idea of performance.

A dog can learn a set of behaviors that it can do on command. It behaves on cue through a process of simple conditioning. It’s an obvious point, but it’s also a reminder that it doesn’t quite work to describe the dog’s efforts as “acting.” An animal isn’t in the business of constructing a different individual, nor does it consciously perform actions to telegraph what will unfold in the rest of the narrative. Dogs fall below a common measure of higher consciousness measured in a procedure called the “mirror test.”  In it, animals are given a temporary facial mark created with a safe dye, then shown a mirror and observed to see if they recognize themselves. Their lack of awareness on the low side of this threshold—common for a dog, but not for a higher functioning ape—doesn’t mean we can’t be enchanted. The famous wire-haired terrier Asta “playing” “Mr. Smith” in Leo McCary’s The Awful Truth (1937) is certainly one of the joys of that film. A running gag in the story is the apparent pact that Mr. Smith has made with his owners: he will hide his face in his paws while they (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) conceal a toy somewhere in the room. Then on cue, he scours the apartment to find it. The fun of his presence comes from being a terrier who, like most pets, wins us over by simply showing up. In comparison with actors who have taken on the personas of another person, a dog is always the same dog. In truth, Asta’s “performance” is mostly a trick finessed into something more by good editing.

The point here is obvious but important. The difference with dogs and other animals is that they don’t have social intentions. They may indeed be imprinted with a social nature. But they cannot fake sociality in the ways that theater and life require. Trainers work to teach dogs to take on broad behaviors that signify certain attitudes: indifference, aggression, an enthusiastic welcome, and so on. But the dog is never really in the game of creating and sustaining an alternate reality. We are the species that gives meaning not only to signs, but symbols. We give significance to elaborate codes far removed from the sensory information that animals process. And we delight in constructing alternate (and often totally false) selves, sometimes relishing the possibilities of a masterful deception. Dogs can deliver fragments of themselves of cue. And they surely aim to please. But what is alien to their nature is the essence of ours.

This human capacity for selective representation of oneself should cast doubt on at least one of the oldest clichés we thoughtlessly foist on each other: the imperative of living a life of “personal authenticity.” This aspiration sits near the top of the Pantheon of most-desired human goals. We savor the idea that there are consistencies of behavior that ostensibly point to some durable mental core. Synonyms for the authentic person are mostly eulogistic: “genuine,” “reliable,” “dependable,” “credible,” and so on. By contrast, no similar bouquets are offered to the consummate role-player. We deny the mastery of numerous selves any public honors. But there are surely times when we recognize the truth:  that we exist in multiples, and that—like the actor—an acquired repertoire of roles is a basic life skill. As audiences to each other, we need the other’s familiar persona, even though the reality that we have multiple selves makes the search for intentions all the more difficult.

Adapted from Gary C. Woodward, The Rhetoric of Intention in Human Affairs (Lexington Books, 2013).

Empathy: Finding Ourselves in Others

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It is virtually impossible to think of the effects of most forms of complex discourse—from film to talk therapies—without addressing the capacities of key agents to acquire understandings that privilege compassion over judgment.

In spite of its obvious place as an essential feature of the fluent communicator, the capacity for empathy is unevenly distributed across any population.  But it remains a central capacity necessary for individuals engaged in complex and highly interactive forms of communication.

Empathy is a bond created by recognition of oneself in someone else’s experience.  Or, as Martin Hoffman ingeniously describes it, empathy is “an affective response more appropriate to someone else’s situation than to one’s own.”1   It simultaneously acknowledges the authenticity of another’s feelings and suggests the momentary creation of a more personal shared experience.  It is a reminder that we are not alone, even when we feel estranged from other people.  Empathy happens when we meet the challenge to imagine the inner lives of others.

The word itself was not the invention of academic psychology, but grew from German aesthetic theory at the beginning of the 20th Century.  As I note in my book, The Perfect Response, Robert Vischer was looking for a way to express the idea of projecting oneself into another object (Einfühlung).2  He wanted to find a vocabulary that would help in the analysis of the individual’s response to the visual arts.  Had he not discovered so fitting a term, others would have surely had to invent it.  It is virtually impossible to think of the effects of most forms of complex communication—from film to talk therapies—without addressing the capacities of key agents to acquire empathetic understanding.

To some extent we seem hardwired for simple forms of empathetic responses.  Psychologist Daniel Goldman describes an unlearned “primal empathy” that flows from simple contact with others.3 We and other primates are naturally inclined to “read” facial and physical expressions, converting them into tentative understandings about what others may be experiencing.  The threshold of awareness can be measured at the margins, as when a primate or infant is able to recognize itself (as opposed to an unknown or threatening alien) on a reflective surface. This kind of “mirroring” begins a sequence of consciousness that includes thinking as if they were the other. “I know how you feel” may be a cliché for the ages, but it reasonably describes what we take to be relatively faithful inferences made in limitless ranges of situations.

Even at the human end of the scale there are no guarantees.   Sometimes the more we know about another person, the less of a connection we feel.  But the reverse usually happens.  Familiarity with an individual and their world increases the likelihood that we will recognize some of their experiences as our own.

In clinical settings focusing on mental health, empathy still functions as a core value in client centered therapy.  The idea of talk therapy without a supportive and accurate listener is almost unthinkable.  If quick and critical judgment is the poison of too many troubled relationships, empathy and full consciousness of how each party is feeling is a necessary antidote.  This therapy is predicated on the suspension of judgment long enough to understand another.   Not surprisingly, the inability to be sympathetic is a recurring symptom in various disorders, including paranoia, narcissism, and the antisocial personality.

Because empathy is a subjective experience, it is easier to observe its basic impulse than to accurately map its affective meanings.  We can strive for objective measures of it, but its sources are always bound in alignments and understandings unique to the individual. Thus the great paradox of empathy is also the paradox of communication:  we live in the isolation of a unique private consciousness, even while the quest for certain understandings pulls us out of ourselves and toward others.

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1 Martin Hoffman, “Empathy: Justice and Moral Judgment,” in Empathy and Its Development ed. by Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 48.

2 Gary C. Woodward, The Perfect Response: Studies in the Rhetorical Personality (Lexington Books, 2010), 27.

3 Daniel Goldman, Social Intelligence (New York: Bantam, 2006), 84-88.