Informal Interpretation Sites of Conscience 2

Informal Interpretation at Sites of Conscience 

            Part 2 of 4:  The Pitfalls of Empathy and Emotional Comfort 

Misconstruing empathy creates a pitfall for interpretation at a Site of Conscience.  Empathy is not “understanding.”  Telling an injured person who is experiencing emotional pain that you “understand” the injury and their emotional response to that injury can create distance from rather than connection to the injured person. Telling a person who is injured that you “understand” their injury (based on an assumed common or similar experience) is patronizing and can result in antagonizing and marginalizing the injured party.  The concept that empathy and understanding are synonymous results from an erroneous belief that all humans are essential the same and react to stimulus and situations in common ways.  Implicit in this erroneous belief is the assumption that there is universal access to “understanding” the complex mechanism of how a particular injury affects another individual.  This assumption also implies that you have complete knowledge of the other person’s life history and how the psychological impact of that life affects their emotional responses.

As an interpreter at a Site of Consciousness, empathy can be effectively described as the emotional recognition that another person is experiencing pain.  The appropriate intellectual component of empathy for an interpreter at a Site of Consciousness is to recognize that visitors experiencing trauma and pain may be cognitively impaired by that injury and not responsive to rational and logical reasoning.  The second pitfall of empathy involves exceeding the point where the interpreter has such a strong empathetic reaction and identification with the visitor’s pain and injury that the interpreter also becomes cognitively impaired. 

An interpreter at a Site of Conscience is also a human being with unique emotional needs and subject to emotional responses as a result of the injustice and injury interpreted at the site as well as interactions with visitors.  It is human nature that, when confronted with sources of pain, especially recurrent sources of pain, people tend to create mechanisms for coping with that pain.  However useful these mechanisms may be for emotional well-being, coping mechanisms used by interpreters at Sites of Conscience may inadvertently be detrimental to the visitor’s experience and become the second pitfall for the interpreter.  If visitors are attempting to express the pain and injury that has arisen as a result of the intellectual and emotional connection to the site and the interpreter manages his/her own level of emotional comfort (with the subject matter and/or the visitors’ emotional response) by redirecting the interaction, “changing the subject,” or “downplaying” the injury by comparing it to other historical events, then the needs of the visitors to make their own emotional and intellectual connections with the site may be impaired and, subsequently, the mission for the site is compromised.

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA