Empathy: Could It Be What You're Missing From Your Doctor? A Washington Psychotherapist Suggests How to Tell . . . and How to Treat the Symptoms

You may not realize it, but a great number of people suffer from EDD. No, you're not reading a misprint of ADD or ED. The acronym stands for empathy deficit disorder.

Nor will you find it listed in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, even though that tome has been expanding as normal variations of mood and temperament have increasingly been defined as disorders. I'm hesitant to suggest adding another one. But this one is real.

Based on my 35 years of experience as a psychotherapist, business psychologist and researcher, I have come to believe that EDD is a pervasive but overlooked condition with profound consequences

I think personally I feel sometimes have too much empathy, by which I mean I'm easily affected by other people's emotions and problems. I know some who seem devoid of empathy, or at least act that way.

I read something today I thought relevant to both this discussion of empathy and this discussion of the war. It was from an for Ralph White who studied war psychology:

He was perhaps best known for his theory distinguishing between empathy and sympathy for one's adversaries.

"Empathy is the great corrective for all forms of war-promoting misperception," he wrote in his 1984 book "Fearful Warriors: A Psychological Profile of U.S.-Soviet Relations."

"It means simply understanding the thoughts and feelings of others. It is distinguished from sympathy, which is defined as feeling with others -- as being in agreement with them. Empathy with opponents is therefore psychologically possible even when a conflict is so intense that sympathy is out of the question. We are not talking about warmth or approval, and certainly not about agreeing with, or siding with, but only about realistic understanding."