Based on the paper “Devil’s Bait” by Leslie Jamison the question at issue that was raised is, 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? The first source found that helps answer this question is “The Challenge of Morgellons Disease” by Caroline S. Koblenzer. This is from the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, and addresses the issue with a more medical point of view. This source provides an overview of what Morgellons patients deal with; feelings of bugs or parasites under the skin crawling and biting, fibers coming out of their skin, and visible sores on many of their bodies from where they try to dig out the “bugs”, fibers, or anything else they believe is coming from their skin. The source makes it clear that many of these patients are very anxious and are just on a search for answers. Many doctors do not believe them, so they go from doctor to doctor hoping just one will understand and believe what they’re saying. According to Koblenzer the patients “‘create’ a ‘cause’ for their symptoms, which makes logical sense to them” (Koblenzer). This often results in them not believing that there is something psychologically wrong with them. They often will not accept any explanation that does not directly correlate to what they believe – that they have “things” and “fibers” inside of their bodies that are causing them to suffer. This source addresses the importance of medical doctors understanding and empathizing with the patient. It stresses that the most important thing is to understand that the patient is in fact feeling those sensations whether the doctor can find an explanation for them or not. This allows them to understand the struggle of the patient even without an outright physical diagnosis. It also allows them to better find ways to refer them to a psychiatrist or some other form of treatment. If the doctor understands that what the person is saying is true, they can find a way to convince the patient that some other form of treatment will be most effective (Koblenzer). This source helps answer the question at issue because not only does it address the overall disease of Morgellons, it emphasizes the importance of understanding the patient and empathizing with them even if it is very difficult to believe what they are saying.

The second source is “Empathic Foundations of Clinical Knowledge” by Nancy Nyquist Potter. This comes from The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry and addresses the question with a more psychological perspective. Potter relates empathy to morality in this piece of writing. She states that “the inner world – and the material, lived experiences – of others can be puzzling, elusive, or very difficult to grasp” (Potter 2). A main point of this paper is that doctors often view their patients as just their diagnosis, not as a full individual person. They can sometimes have a tendency to lump together patients with similar diagnoses and do not take into account how the mental disorder affects each individual personally. Empathy from the clinician plays an important role in understanding why others may be feeling certain symptoms. According to Potter it is important for clinicians to use empathy to sort of take the place of their patient and view their experience through the patient’s point of view. Another important thing is that the doctor must have accurate knowledge of the patient’s illness so they can help them most effectively. Being educated about the illness helps the doctor see how various treatments and therapies may help that specific patient. Having knowledge of what they are going through and being able to empathize with the patient will also allow the doctor to form a better relationship with them which may help the patient feel understood and stop fighting what the doctor says if it does not match exactly what they would like to hear. In addition, the clinician must be able to understand what the patient does to cope with their symptoms and suffering and how that may factor into treatment plans. This source effectively aids in answering the question at issue since it deeply addresses the importance of a doctor having empathy.

Works Cited

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

Jamison, Leslie. “Devil’s Bait.” The Empathy Exams, pp. 27–56.

Potter, Nancy Nyquist. “Empathic Foundations of Clinical Knowledge.” Oxfordhandbooks.com, Oxford Handbooks Online, Sept. 2013, www.oxfordhandbooks.com.ezp.lib.rochester.edu/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579563.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199579563-e-021?print=pdf.

“Devil’s Bait” by Leslie Jamison brings up the topic of empathy and how it relates to mental illness, or just illness in general. This piece of writing covers the author’s experience at a conference for people with Morgellons disease. Morgellons is a disease where the person affected believes they have bugs crawling under their skin and fibers coming out of sores and blisters all over their body. Many doctors do not believe these people when they come in begging for help, and believe it is all caused by a delusion not a skin disease like the person believes. According to all the people at the conference it can be extremely isolating, and the conference provides them with a sense of community where they can be with people who truly understand what they are going through. She brings up the concept of there being a fine line between understanding and empathizing with someone and being just like everybody else, full of disbelief and doubt. This piece raises the question at issue, does our knowledge of someone having an illness, whether it be physical or mental, affect our ability to properly empathize with them? This is an important question to answer because it causes us to think about what brings us to feel empathy. Do we only feel empathy for people with an illness because we are aware they are affected by it? The case discussed in this text brings about this issue because it displays that people find it difficult to truly empathize with someone when we cannot directly relate to what they are going through, or just do not understand what is going through their minds that make them believe they have bugs crawling underneath their skin. This is the case with a lot of mental illnesses. For example, it may be hard for some people to understand and empathize with people who have anxiety because they can not imagine feeling the same way in certain situations. It is similar for serious physical illnesses, such as cancer. It may be extremely difficult for someone to understand the physical and emotional toll the illness has on a person unless they have directly gone through the same experience.

Works Cited

Jamison, Leslie. “Devil’s Bait.” The Empathy Exams, pp. 27–56.

The scene in A Time to Kill of Jake’s closing statement is one of the most prominent examples of empathy in the film. It is a prime moment of not only a character in the movie invoking empathy in other characters, but a character invoking the feeling of empathy in the viewer as well. For the most part, the empathy that Jake is able to invoke is real. However, the empathy he is invoking could also be viewed as guilt. Up until this point in the movie the jury had shown little empathy for Carl Lee and were planning on calling him guilty. Jake’s statement is able to pull guilt from them, since they were looking at the case through very racially biased eyes, and make them change their minds and feel empathy. The scene begins with Jake apologizing for not being an adequate lawyer for Carl Lee, this serves to make the jury think more about how the trial would have changed if the lawyer had been more efficient. He starts discussing the concept of truth and whether we search for it with our heads or our hearts. Through this he causes the emotion of guilt to start coming through because he implies that we let our racial bias get in the way of searching for the truth with our brains. Therefore we must listen with our hearts, and this is when he starts causing the jury to feel empathy. It causes the characters to look further within themselves to realize what they may have been doing, and this tactic was very effective in invoking guilt and empathy. Jake leads into his empathy-invoking story by saying “we are all equal in the eyes of the law. That’s not true. Because the eyes of the law are human eyes”(A Time to Kill 2:15:10-2:15:15). Of course, the viewer is aware that this town is extremely racist but the actual members of the jury follow many of the same racist values that cause their judgement to be clouded by bias. This allows the viewer to see the guilt start appearing throughout the courtroom. This is the moment where it really settles in. The main invocation of empathy occurs when Jake attempts to put the jury in the young girl’s shoes, or at least into the shoes of her parent. He describes her rape and attack in vivid detail, mentioning how she was used for target practice when they were done and was thrown over a bridge when they couldn’t successfully hang her. This was the point in the movie where tears began running down the faces of the audience members. He ends the emotional story with the line “now imagine she’s white” (A Time to Kill 2:20:20-2:20:22) in order to take the emotions he caused, guilt and empathy, and combine them to ultimately make his final point. This makes everyone in the courtroom look up in surprise because they finally realized what they had been doing the whole trial. They finally felt what it would be like to be the parent of the girl who was raped and beaten, and realized that they might have done the same thing as Carl Lee if it had been their kid.

Work Cited

A Time to Kill. Joel Schumacher. Warner Bros, 1996. Swank Motion Pictures. Web. 20 Sept 2017.