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From: joe donaher
Date: 05 Oct 2005
Time: 10:51:36 -0500
Remote Name: 159.14.201.85
Bob, As always, thank you for a thought provoking paper! Sympathy involves sharing someone else’s feelings, empathy emphasizes understanding them. If a clinician assumes that they share the feelings of a PWS, they are likely to react and make judgments based on their own feelings. Thus, sympathy directs the clinician towards the aspects of the stuttering that they think are pertinent. Empathy directs the clinician towards realistic insights into the PWS life. In my view, many slps jump for quick fixes because they are not comfortable with stuttering or the feelings that they experience when they "sympathize" with pws. Perhaps increased interactions with pws, increased clinical experience with pws and an increase in empathy would help. I quess we just have to wait for the next, new standards from ASHA!