I generally use “sympathy” to refer to an acknowlegement of another’s feelings without entering into them, and “empathy” to refer to actually experiencing what the other is feeling.
Thus, I’ll sympathize with an acquaintance or a coworker who’s going though something difficult, but I’ll actually empathize with a close friend or loved one going through the same thing. In the case of sympathy, I maintain a bit of emotional distance.
I was making this distinction – or thought I was – to someone the other day, and the email I got in return seemed to be using them in the opposite sense:
Am I misunderstanding the distinction here, or is this other person? I’ve been checking dictionaries and not finding them particularly helpful.
Empathy means the ability to comprehend the other’s experience.
Sympathy means the ability to comprehend the other’s experience and having a positive feeling towards them in that comprehension.
You need to empathise with your enemy to help defeat them, but you sure as hell don’t sympathise with them.
While I agree that empathy does not by any means connote liking or agreement, it still implies a far greater degree of experiencing that which the other is experiencing than sympathy, which requires only a friendly, open ear. As a cite, I mention the episode of Star Trek TOS entitled The Empath, in which this alien actually assumed the injuries of others in order to cure them.
Sympathy is going “Oh, I’m sorry, too bad!” when someone tells you he was socked in the nose. Empathy is going “Oh, ouch!” because you momentarily ‘felt’ being socked in the nose yourself.
Thanks for the cite, pulykamell – I was getting frustrated reading definitions when I was looking for a direct comparison. I bet you know how that feels.
Note that there is an unusual, typically unstated, assumption most people have regarding positive emotions. Many (but not all) people might say they empathize with someone’s good luck, but rare is the person who might state they sympathize with a lottery winner.
I use them both this way as well. I believe you are correct and your acquaintance is not.
Now, on to my question - Why is the word empathic, and not empathetic, the common corollary to the word sympathetic, since empathic and empathetic mean the same thing? Also, why is sympathic not a word?
[Hijack]The word empathy (εμπάθεια) in modern Greek has a negative meaning. The best translation would be “maliciousness”. Quite the opposite meaning from english. Anybody knows why?[/Hijack]
They’re obviously closely related words with overlapping meanings, so people will have different understandings. Ditto for dictionaries, because they record usage.
The only way to avoid difficulties is to define terms in advance. Hasn’t it been said that most arguments boil down to semantics/definitions? That’s what this question is.
I don’t understand the last example from the dictionary.com faq. To have “been there”, wouldn’t you have to have had asthma? Or had parents who wouldn’t do something for your health?
It seems to me that, according to this particular dictionary, the important distinction seems to be the phrase I’ve italicized.
I doubt stk uses the words that way most of the time. I think they were simply citing the literal meaning of the etymology (sym-, with + pathy, feeling) to make a point, just as if I said, “Society often treats people with mental illness as if they were insane, which actually means ‘unclean’.” It’s just that their point was weakened by the fact that the etymological meaning of sympathy happens to be nearly identical with the actual meaning of empathy, with which it was supposedly being contrasted.
I suspect stk might be a little unclear on the meaning of empathy, but I’m sure they don’t really think sympathy means “actually feeling what the other feels” in common usage. If they had, they wouldn’t have explained it.
Whoa, how strange. Thought I was in the twilight zone for a second there until I realized rowrrbazzle bumped this 2-month old thread with the exact same title as this one, posted yesterday.
