The answer is probably no. Not even Mother Teresa is truly empathic. I had a good friend who had a Master’s in Social Welfare. She spent a year with a poverty stricken family in the Kentucky hills. She said she for the first time she experienced true poverty. But although she established an empathic link with the family she was staying with, the difference was that she knew that once her internship was over she would go back to her comfortable home in San Francisco.
This could be your personal experience or an experience of another. Let’s stay civil on this thread and remember that we’re friends.
Does “true empathy” imply some kind of mental brain wave reading? If so, then no. There is no Deanna Troi. But I’ve known people who were extremely sensitive to other peoples’ distress. They pick up on subtle behavioral cues, and seem to really suffer along with others.
I think most Mothers experience true empathy for their children. We know them so well and love them so much that we feel what they’re feeling, perhaps even more keenly sometimes. I’ve known Fathers who are like this as well, but not as many.
I’ve also seen many times at boxing matches when a boxer gets hit quite a few audience members wince and even have their heads thrown back when the punch lands. Not sure how much of a line you can draw between “mirroring” and “empathy.”
Now, if you are defining empathy as an exact duplication of experience, then of course not. Not even identical twins raised side by side can say that, although I guess they come the closest.
Define “true empathy.” Is it qualitatively different than social compassion? Why do you feel that moving on to another issue somehow invalidates the empathy felt earlier?
For instance, why is it everybody is asking me to define my terms. I’m still a newby on this SDMB so give me a break. Does anybody have empathy for a newcomer?
You have a recorded history on this board of having your own definitions for certain words that do not match any of those in dictionaries, and not telling us until coerced to do so.
Because we may spend wasted effort arguing for or against a position you do not hold. You are the one proposing the question, we are asking for clarification in order to answer you to your satisfaction.
Besides, you contradict yourself between the title and body of the OP.
That’s pretty darn restrictive. What do you mean by “re-experiencing the pain?” Physical pain? Do I need to hurt myself before I can feel socially and ethically obligated to assist someone else?
As to whether or not it’s impossible for two people to share joy or pain I’d have to say…no.
If you can hook up electrodes to certain areas of the brain and cause a person to feel joy, sadness or pain, it is certainly possible to hook a second set of electrodes to another person and stimulate the same nerves at the same time. One wouldn’t be feeling the other person’s feelings(so to speak), but they would be sharing the same feelings.