After reading Leslie Jamison’s “Devil’s Bait”, the group came up with the question that in the context of mental or physical illness, is it possible for an outsider free of the illness to fully empathize with the victim, or just sympathize with them? If not, what factors limit an outsider’s ability to empathize? In order to answer this question, the group looks into two sources, “The challenge of Morgellons disease” from Caroline S.Koblenzer and “Empathic Foundations of Clinical Knowledge” from Nancy Nyquist Potter.

The first source is from Caroline S.Koblenzer who is a dermatologist that focus on skin-psyche. In “The challenge of Morgellons disease”, she describes the challenges that the dermatologist is facing about Morgellons disease and provides the possible solution for it. Koblenzer firsts start describes the sensation that the Morgellons’ patients are feeling and the suffering they are going through. Koblenzer explains that the name “Morgellons” was given by Sir Thomas Browne who first describes the symptoms of Morgellons. The patients who have the similar symptoms soon categorized themselves as “Morgellons patients”. Koblenzer states that the anxious patients would usually make up an explanation of the cause and avoid it extremely to prevent the contagion. The author suggests that Morgellons are related to psychiatric conditions and mostly result from the illusion that drugs bring. Then Koblenzer claims that with the internet, more and more people share their experiences about which Morgellons makes the situation even worse. Because it induces people to believe this disease actually exists while it might just be a delusion. She concludes in the end that Morgellons is curable by taking medication like pimozide continuously. The author gives us a detailed description of Morgellons and her opinion that Morgellons is illusional. The professional evidence helps the group to look at Morgellons disease from a different perspective.

The second source is Nancy Nyquist Potter’s “Empathic Foundations of Clinical Knowledge”. In her essay, she looks at sympathy from different views and thinks that empathy is an important value to be effective clinicians. First, she states that importance of empathy in the society and how it can impact on people. She then connects to these ideas to the clinical experience which also requires a rich understanding of empathy. Because for clinicians it’s necessary to understand what the patients are going through and make the patients feel understand. The author also suggests that world traveling would give the clinicians open perspective which helps them to fully understand their patients. Lastly, The author concluded that clinicians need the moral skills to feel empathy with the patients in order to work effectively with them. This source helps the group to understand the importance of clinicians or doctors to have empathy when facing patients with special diseases.

Work Cited

Koblenzer, Caroline S.“The Challenge of Morgellons Disease.” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Mosby, 17 Oct. 2006, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190962206012187?via=ihub.

Potter, Nancy Nyquist. “Empathic Foundations of Clinical Knowledge – Oxford Handbooks.”Oxford Handbooks – Scholarly Research Reviews, 16 June 2017, www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579563.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199579563-e-021.

In Leslie Jamison’s “Devil’s Bait”, the author discusses her trip to Austin for a conference, where she met people who claim themselves to have Morgellons. Morgellons is a disease which the common symptom is to have strange fibers emerge from the skin. But Morgellons has never been diagnosed and most of the doctors suggest that Morgellons is simply a delusion from drugs. The people who get ignored from the doctors assemble the Morgellons which lead to this conference to let them share their stories. During the conference, different “patients” describe how they suffer from Morgellons mentally and physically which aroused the empathy from Jamison. She related to herself and began to wonder if she has Morgellons too. The author concluded in the end that without knowing if this disease exists or not, all she can do for those people is to feel empathy.
The empathy that the author discussed in the essay has risen up the question whether people should feel empathy without reasoning? The importance of this question is that it leads us to think if the patients’ stories truly evoke empathy or simply fear. The author has clearly explained that she does not think Morgellons really exists. The reason that the author feels empathy for those people is that she understands their suffering and is afraid of it. The growing fear that these stories bring makes Jamison related to her own experience. Jamison thought about when she found there was a worm in her ankle, after taking it out, she constantly felt like there were more worms hidden in there. This experience leads her to fear about Morgellons happen to herself which leads to empathize with the people who have Morgellons. But what if the disease does not exist and the stories have been exaggerated, is the empathy she feels real or not.

Jamison, Leslie, et al. “The Devil’s Bait.” Harper’s Magazine.

Successful movies usually position the audience into the main character’s’ perspective and made the audience feel the emotions that the characters are having. In the movie “A Time to Kill,” the director Joel Schumacher used different techniques to evoke viewers’ empathy which leads them to believe that the main character Carl Lee is not guilty. Throughout the movie, the director has conveyed this idea by showing us the suffering that the characters went through. Especially at the beginning of the movie, the rape scene had let the audience felt empathy for the little girl. The movie started off with the two drunken white men humiliated the black people in the town. When they saw Carl Lee’s daughter little Tonya carrying her groceries on the road, they abducted her to the forest and then brutally tortured, beat and raped her. Although the director didn’t directly show the audience the violent raping scene, it still gives us enough pictures like blood, bruise, and rope to let people imagine what happened. The two minutes scene had shown the viewers how despairing and scared the little girl was which evoke our feeling of empathy. This scene had created that the two men were deserved to die and we understand why Carl Lee would kill the two men.

I think the empathy that this scene evoke is real because the director used first person point of view to let the audience understand what a ten-year-old girl had experienced. In this way, the audience would actually place them into the situation and felt empathy for the little girl. During the movie, I had to pause the movie several times because I couldn’t even imagine how painful she was.What influenced me the most in this scene is when little tonya kept shouting: “Daddy, daddy”(ATTK 04:52-05:10), but no one was there to help her. The contrast between the brutality of the two men and the weak girl has appealed to me how vulnerable that little Tonya was. When facing such an instance, all she can do is to scream and cry for her dad desperately and waited for all of these to be over. The director used this scene at the beginning to influence people to believe it’s rightful for Carl Lee to kill the two men. Without this scene, people wouldn’t understand Carl Lee’s motivation for the shooting. The empathy that this scene brought is also the reason why Carl Lee was verdict to be innocent. It led the jurors to despite the races and realize the fact that this kind of horrible things can happen to anyone including themselves and their family. I think the movie has successfully made me felt what little Tonya felt. For me, the empathy for her didn’t go away when the movie was over, I still felt sorry for what she had experienced.

Work Cited

A Time to Kill. Dir. Joel Schumacher. Regency Enterprises, Warner Bros, 1996. digital campus. Web. 20 September 2017

Gentleman. I’m not here today to persuade you to believe me but to present you with a hypothetical theory. In my theory, Miss Mayella is a young woman who was constantly beaten by her father, had to take care of all the younger siblings. Mr. Robinson was the only person that was kind to her and helped her with chores from time to time. Then Miss Mayella did something that this society is not allowed which is falling in love with a black man. On that night, Miss Mayella let all the children go to the town and plan to seduce Mr. Robinson. But Mr. Robinson, a man that is loyal to his wife, rejected Miss Mayella seduction and made her went mad. At the same time, Mr. Ewell went back home and caught what she was doing. He couldn’t accept the truth that her daughter was in love with a black man, so he’s started to beat up his daughter. Mr. Robinson ran away with frightening and guilt. To maintain their family’s dignity, Mr. Ewell decided to make up a lie and blame all these to Mr.Robinson. Indeed, it’s easy to destroy a black man’s reputation, but it’s hard to admit their own mistake.

Despite the fact that Mr.Ewell gave us a coherent story, the evidence that he provided was clearly contradicted to each other. The most contradictable fact is that Mr.Tate claimed, “she was beaten around the head”(TKAM 1:10:31-1:10:32). While Mr. Robinson obviously doesn’t even have the ability to accomplish this. He has sworn to God that he is a right handed man that had no use of his left arm. A man with only one arm could never make bruise all around Miss Mayella ’s neck. But as an ambidextrous person, it was easy for Mr. Ewell to do so.

I believe most of you sitting here today have family that is waiting for you to come home. Mr. Robinson, although has a different skin color is still a human being. An innocent human that has a wife and an unborn child in her wife’s belly. I trust a man that loves his wife so much would never do such unfaithful thing to her. If anyone in this court made an unfair decision, this man’s wife wouldn’t have anyone to take care of her and the children would never be able to see his father in the face. He’s children gonna grow up knowing his father is a sin man that was put to death. Gentleman, I urge you to avoid thinking about any discriminated ideas about races, skin colors and decide carefully with evidence. Think of this man as a human being, as a husband, as a father, not a person with different skin color. Now I have presented you with the truth, I trust you would make the right decision.

Work Cited

To Kill a Mockingbird. Robert Mulligan. Universal Studios. 1962. Web. 9 September 2017.