The victim role

Perhaps not a direct causation but there is a link.

I mean, how does a parent typically instill and develop a conscience in their child? By asking the child "How would you feel if....".

A child hits another child: "How would you feel if Johnny hit you?"
A child breaks or takes a toy: "What if I break your toy? Here let me break it. Do you feel good?"

It's by relating something/someone to one's self that others are understood.

If the reference point (yourself) is 'off', the understanding of the other/situation will likely be off.

How many times has jomp said that he struggles in normal social interactions because he doesn't relate to the more complex emotions that normal people have? He doesn't get them. His wife has to run interference between him and some of their friends, or she has to explain the whys of social interactions to him later.

I just had something like this happen between myself and someone with a PD, and his thinking was "If that happened to me, I wouldn't care. I'd think it's funny. So why are you reacting differently to what I did?" My reaction makes no sense to him because it is not how he'd react.

Based on my own experience there's a direct link indeed. I was always a rather empathetic person, but was also one to make snap sloppy judgements. Since I've started being kinder to myself, I have also become more empathetic. I can identify other people's trigger points quicker (because I've made friends with mine) and navigate around their pain better.

Just to illustrate Eight's point.

So to me it's clear as day, that the two types of people having a hard time experiencing this causation in a visceral manner are either not in touch with their feelings or possess a very thick layer of defenses.

i don't think much 'normal' empathy necessarily needs that reference point of the self in terms of what's been done to the person and how they react; if a 'normal' empathetic person sees someone in distress, regardless of how it happened, they will feel empathy and 'hurt' too, because they relate to the hurting itself, rather than how one would react to whatever happened. this is evidenced by the fact that people feel empathy in situations they've never experienced before or cannot even imagine themselves experiencing, but as long as they can identify the emotion then empathy will be triggered.

so unless you have an inability to be hurt or an inability to show through facial expressions, etc, that you've been hurt then empathy should be triggered, if you have 'normal' empathy, at just the sight of another's pain (or happiness) based on your relating to those emotions.

i believe the true nature of the empathy deficit is actually disconnect, and actually essentially being unable to relate the self to other humans at all. there is a fundamental disconnect where one sees themselves as an 'alien', and thus even where someone shows similar emotions to myself or those which i can experience empathy won't be triggered because it's like trying to empathize with a beetle - we're just too different. or maybe this is just my experience lol

Eight wrote:
I mean, how does a parent typically instill and develop a conscience in their child? By asking the child "How would you feel if....".

But not in isolation. The parent will have created a structure of principles and values which are considered to be "true" and then, within that structure, asks the child "how would you feel if..."

Using an example of behaviour that might feel odd to many on the forum. A Jewish parent might ask a child, "How would you feel if someone offered you a bacon sandwich?" The answer is not how the child would naturally feel; it's how they feel based on the fact that they've already been conditioned to feel a certain way through education and lifestyle.

Certainly my problem began before this stage; I didn't accept the initial premise. Asking a child how they'd feel if Johnny hit them didn't work because I didn't care if Johnny hit me because it allowed me to fight back and I didn't accept that causing people discomfort was a problem. So, not being able to "feel" it was secondary.

even though conscience and empathy interact, i would consider them separate for purposes of understanding.

conscience can provide rationalizations to mute empathy ('he deserved it so i don't feel bad for him'), which can be taught, but that doesn't negate the fact that empathy was or can be initially felt before conscience or lack of intervenes.

i guess the question is are we talking about lack of empathy itself, or having normal empathy but having something else broken that interferes, two differently natured deficits of empathy.

Fair point, so there are in fact, three stages to developing a constructive empathy:

1. Establish "correct" behaviour by conditioning.
2. Generate a conscience reaction to contravening that behaviour (punishment / reward)
3. Employ empathy to reinforce that conditioning. Empathy now works, as it will have a negative feeling to the child as it's wrong behaviour fights its conditioning.

However, if #1 doesn't mean anything to the child then #2 and #3 can't happen.

'constructive empathy', i agree

but before all that empathy itself needs to be had

So you're suggesting that a child cannot be conditioned if it doesn't have a natural empathy?

well conditioning is based on fear isn't it?

if they lack or have reduced or have unresponsive fear they won't be able to be conditioned.

i think empathy is a separate process.

Fear creates dependency in most animals; it keeps babies near to their parents. So, if a child has no natural fear then it's emotional dependency on its parents will be much lower and it's need to accept the conditioning will be less.

Fear = dependency = relying on information from parents = acceptance of principles = conditioning which can now be reinforced using empathy.