ipl-logo

What Is Barbara Lazear Ascher's Trauma Of Compassion

673 Words3 Pages

In 1980, Dr. Robert Plutchik, an author and psychologist, decided to get in touch with feelings. He constructed a theory of emotions, categorizing them as primary, secondary, or tertiary. In short, a primary emotion is an immediate response, while a secondary emotion is incited by the former, leading to the tertiary emotion, the most vulnerable to one’s control, and typically the most tenacious. Initially, it’s a chain reaction, with each emotion catalyzing its successor. In her essay, Barbara Lazear Ascher observes the behavior of her fellow New Yorker’s interactions with their homeless populace. She focuses on the emotions that come, and how they provoke the emotions that are presented. Out west, Nancy Mairs shares her compelling story of the difficulties she must face living with Multiple Sclerosis. Her trauma is impactful on many people. After coming to a standstill with her condition herself, she struggles to understand the way her disease affects those close to her. Barbara Lazear Ascher and Nancy Mairs illustrate how pity or fear lead to remorse before progressing to compassion, justifying compassion as a tertiary emotion. In these particular sequences of emotions, pity or fear present themselves as primary, remorse is implied as the secondary, and the tertiary lies in compassion. Nancy Mairs shares the things that impact her the most in her …show more content…

Though she doesn’t want to, she believes the people around her pity her for being “a cripple”, that they see her as disabled and small. They then feel remorse because she can’t change “the way [she is]”. Leading them to “profess fondness”, simply because it’s the right thing to do, because she cannot control her M.S., and they are aware of that, it just takes time to realize. Alternatively, a New York mother encounters a man that looks intimidating. Their interaction is brief, but says a great deal about the

Show More
Related
775 Words | 4 Pages

Even though she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, she is still able to have the strength to achieve anything that is possible to her. Because of having MS, the unpredictable course of the disease were terrifying to her. Each night she would get into bed wondering whether she will ever get out again the next morning. Whether she be able to see, speak, to hold a pen between, knowing that one day might come. With the horrible situation in Nancy's life she had the strength to overcome any obstacle.

Read More
718 Words | 3 Pages

In “Unspeakable Conversations” she details her experience. Harriet McBryde Johnson effectively uses the rhetorical appeals of ethos and pathos, along with her uses of first-person narrative and descriptive language, to support her argument that contrary to stereotypes, a person living with a severe disability can live a happy and fulfilling life. Harriet McBryde Johnson was born in 1957 with a neuromuscular disease. At the time of this essay, she had been disabled for over four decades. Born to parents who both taught foreign language, they were able to afford hired help but she knew it could not be for her whole life.

Read More
637 Words | 3 Pages

Literature that stimulates the feeling of pity, sympathy and sorrow is Pathos. The two pieces of literature express pathos in different lights, showcasing a rollercoaster of emotions for the reader. John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men and Christie McLaren’s article “Suitcase Lady” both expose heartache and social inequalities to deduce the feeling of commiseration. The bleak hardship of life affirms the heartache through Lennie and the Suitcase Lady. Lennie is loyal to George and is terrified of upsetting his friend.

Read More
434 Words | 2 Pages

In Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay titled “On Compassion” Ascher considers the concept of compassion by utilizing her own encounters with the homeless as a vehicle to make her argument. In her argument, she interprets compassion as an abstract concept, and portrays empathy as a building block to compassion; making the argument that to be a more tolerant society one must first learn empathy in order to demonstrate true compassion. When analyzing Ascher’s rhetoric, her style, diction and rhetorical devices reveal a skeptical tone and serve a greater purpose in appealing to the reader’s sense of ethos and pathos. Namely, Ascher’s use of first-person narrative and word choice like “we” appeals to the reader’s sense of ethos, which eventually builds

Read More
568 Words | 3 Pages

Identify the distinct emotions felt by Fannie Lawrence. What situations caused these emotions? The start of the scene Fannie felt guilty hoping Otis would remember to get the kids ready for school in the morning. She felt guilty because she knew he got in late from work but she too had been feeling exhausted.

Read More
839 Words | 4 Pages

The poet successfully illustrates the magnitude with which this disease can change its victim’s perspective about things and situations once familiar to

Read More
791 Words | 4 Pages

When people are traumatized by an event they are pushed to experience the five stages of grief. The “Gospel”, by Philip Levine and “the boy detective loses love”, by Sam Sax both use characters that are going through one of the stages of grief. Levine and Sax both explain the thoughts and process of what a person thinks when they go through these stages with imagery. Levine uses symbolism, a sad tone, and a set setting in “Gospel” to illustrate that grieving takes you into a depth of thoughts. Sax uses anaphoras, an aggressive tone, and an ambiguous setting to convey that grieving takes you into a tunnel of anger and rage.

Read More
107 Words | 1 Pages

At the start of her speech, Jill Bolte Taylor, critically displays pathos with the use of her brother's mental disorder. Standing in front of a crowd of fascinated people, she uses pathos to capture their compassion. At the start of her speech, she engages with the audience by saying, "I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia." (Taylor). This use of pathos was highly effective because she captures their attention making them feel sincere and sympathetic towards her.

Read More
226 Words | 1 Pages

In the passage Nancy Mairs calls herself cripple. She uses different rhetorical mode and devices such as similes to the reader an emotional appeal. In the passage cripple is used to symbolize handicap and disabled. This gives the reader an emotional appeal to how she’s feeling. Nancy Mairs being called handicap lowers confidence, making her feel weak.

Read More
820 Words | 4 Pages

Frederick Buechner once said, “Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin.” Similarly, an author by the name of Barbara Lazear Ascher wrote an essay called “On Compassion,” in which she states that people learn about compassion when they experience hardships and begin to put oneself in another’s place. Along with the idea of compassion being learned, Ascher also tries to make us wonder what our motive is that leads us to being compassionate. Ascher tries to make us question why we feel the need to be compassionate towards others throughout her essay.

Read More
1338 Words | 6 Pages

Essay on The Homeless Introduction to Human Resources Columbia college By Kawana Roberts The issue of contemporary homelessness has took a huge shift from the common perception of homeless people. I am witnessing a shift from the image of ‘homelessness’ being a physically dirty, pan handling, poor, uneducated individual who does not have a physical home for shelter. Initially, I failed to recognize that ‘homelessness’ can be a temporary state on can live in. Not all homeless people are homeless by “choice”, sometimes people are homeless by “force”.

Read More
1012 Words | 5 Pages

First, the Kitty Genovese Article Reflection answers the essential question that empathy can create a stronger, more just society because if Kitty Genovese´s community had at least a little empathy, she would have never died and their society would be more united and they would have saved a person’s life. The Kitty Genovese story is about how a young woman was walking home after work, late at night, and she was stabbed to death while her neighbors just watched and listened to her cries for help. In the article reflection, I had to write about why her neighbors did not

Read More
1242 Words | 5 Pages

In her essay, “On Compassion”, Barbara Lazear Ascher analyzes the idea of compassion and the -------- of the homeless by the those more fortunate. She presents two instances in which homeless people are gifted with money or food items and ponders the motivation behind these acts. ----------------------. Targeting a broad audience, specifically people belonging to a higher socioeconomic standing, Ascher emphasizes the need for awareness of the adversity of the homeless, establishes that one must learn “compassion” for the homeless and less fortunate, and poses the question of whether the motivation for the “compassion” is relevant.

Read More
943 Words | 4 Pages

The computational representational theory of the mind (CRUM) is a theory devised to model the complexities of the human mind in cognitive science. Human thought processes have been simplified by thinking about abstract thought processes in terms of concrete computational procedures (Thagard, 11). CRUM theory surmises that thinking is the result of the application of operations to mental representations (Thagard, 11). Recent literature suggests our emotions are intrinsically tied to cognitive processes (Dalgleish and Power, 1999). Emotions are influential factors that affect mental representations such as concepts, analogies and imagery in cognitive science.

Read More
1565 Words | 7 Pages

To Suffer or Not to Suffer As human beings, we try to eschew from the suffering and adversities that plague human morality. Nonetheless, society remains drawn to the surplus of tragedies in plays, movies, and literary works. Not only do these works provide an escape from our own hardships, but suffering and tragedy is a significant aspect to the development of human society. Personally, I have experienced my own share of sorrow, trauma, and difficulties in life. While they may not be as severe as those faced by the characters in A Doll’s House and Never Let Me Go, a pervasive theme still manifests in the presence of suffering.

Read More

More about What Is Barbara Lazear Ascher's Trauma Of Compassion

Open Document