[pengaru]

Empathy is an important part in understanding how to manipulate others. Without being able to put yourself into their perspective it's difficult to determine what actions will have which effects.

People over/misuse the word empathy, often conflating it with sympathy and/or compassion, when they're very different things.

A book can teach empathy while guiding people to be manipulative or exploitive of others. Just because you're able to see things from another's perspective (empathy) doesn't mean you'll give a damn about them or feel what they're feeling (sympathy).

[koonsolo]

I get your point indeed.

I'm not a psychologist or something, so this is my opinion. But once you have empathy, you must be a real psycho to not feel a damn at that point.

I cannot imagine having empathy but then totally lacking sympathy (in a sane person).

[pengaru]

Learning to separate empathy from sympathy with a conscious choice is part of adulting, a facet of establishing and enforcing (emotional) boundaries.

Those who lack that ability are quite vulnerable, it's one of the most rampantly exploited human flaws. "Bleeding Hearts" are a hugely exploited demographic, where people largely experience reactionary emotional sympathy and effectively lack empathy as a distinct observation they may then deliberate on what response is appropriate.

The psychopaths are the ones who either after deliberation never care, or can't even bother to deliberate on what they're seeing, which to the observer is tough if not impossible to disambiguate from a lack of empathy. Psychopathy is a pretty blurry thing though IMHO.