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In
this talk, Dr. Kohut will consider what empathy is -
perspective-taking (thinking and feeling one’s way into the
experience of the other) - and what empathy is not
- merger, identification, and above all, sympathy. Empathy,
for Kohut, always involves an awareness of difference, of the
distinction between the empathizing self and the empathized
other. Since empathy is decidedly not sympathy, we can and
must - Dr. Kohut argues - empathize with people we find
decidedly unsympathetic.
Dr. Kohut will demonstrate that history written from an empathic
perspective, that is, from the perspective of the historical
subject, is different from history written from the perspective
of the observing historian. To illustrate this difference,
he will consider the notorious Wannsee Conference of January 20,
1942, a key moment in the Nazi genocide of the Jews of Europe. He
will conclude by emphasizing that historians and others seeking
to know and understand human beings must be self-aware and
self-reflective in their use of empathy, to constantly be aware
of when they are empathizing and when they are not.
A
historian with psychoanalytic training, Thomas Kohut, PhD is
the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Professor of History at Williams
College. From 2000 to 2006, Kohut served as dean of the
faculty at Williams. He was a member of the Board of
Trustees of the Austen Riggs Center for nearly twenty years and
is currently a member of the Council of Scholars which advises
the Erikson Institute at Riggs. Kohut is also president of
the board of the Freud Foundation US, which supports the work of
the Freud Museum in Vienna. Kohut is the author of three books,
most recently, Empathy
and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past.
He has also published articles on a number of historical and
psychological topics, including on the German humorist, Wilhelm
Busch, on letters from German soldiers at the battle of
Stalingrad, and on psychoanalysis and history.
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