Autism and Empathy Autism is usually confused as a disorder of lack of empathy. We often think that people on the Autistic Spectrum lack the understanding of emotions or have the inability to comprehend emotions.
It is a struggle, no doubt.
British professor of developmental psychopathology Simon-Baron Cohen saw autism as an ‘empathy disorder’. According to Simon- Baron-Cohen one of the key features of Autism is “mind blindness”- which means you cannot put yourself in someone else’s shoes; you cannot read other people’s faces and body language.
However, many people like us who belong to the Mental Health field may contradict this. The rationale behind it is that, just because a person on the spectrum cannot comprehend what emotions are; one cannot say that they don’t experience it. They may not have the language for it but saying that they lack emotions may not be something that reflects the reality. It is a faulty act of de-humanizing. WHICH IS THE GREATEST MISTAKE one can do as a mental health professional.
Whither Empathy? It lies deep.
Then came my clinical experience which made me redefine Autism. Often if one talks to family members of people on the spectrum one may recollect incidents where one witnesses empathy.
Empathy is something which may come to you as a surprise at times. A very famous
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There is also a deeper level concept of empathy called Affective Empathy, which makes one not just imagine what the other is feel but also feel the same. It is about entering the ‘mind-space’ of another person which is almost like merging your identity with the other. It is where the dyad of ‘I’ and ‘the other’ melts. This is locus where the concept of Altruism emanates