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

Informal Interpretation Sites of Conscience 1

Informal Interpretation at Sites of Conscience 

            Part 1 of 4:  The National Park Service Mandate 

National Park Service Director’s Orders

6.  Personal and Non-Personal Services

             6.1 Personal Services

Personal services are those in which staffs... facilitate opportunities for emotional and intellectual connections between the resources and the visitors.

By their nature, Sites of Conscience are rife with emotion and create emotional dichotomies.   The National Park Service (NPS) mandate (see above) for these sites is to provide a venue where visitors can experience and confront these potentially volatile emotions.   Sites of Conscience exist as recognition of a historical event wherein one group of people inflicted an injustice on another group of people. Historically, the perpetrators of the injustice created an institutionalized system of rationalizations and intellectual exemptions to justify their actions and defend their belief systems.  The victims of the injustice received and often continue to carry the emotional injury and trauma as a result of that injustice.  The designation of a Site of Conscience carries an implicit recognition that: 1) an injury and trauma was created from the perpetrated act; and 2) the perpetrated act was an injustice.  This dual recognition usually represents a de facto judgment against, and reversal of, the institutionalized belief system that created the injustice.  Too many visitors, this reversal of institutional beliefs is a greater affront than the initial injustice.  Sites of Conscience are sites of contention.  The diametrically opposed perspectives implicit in Sites of Conscience create unique challenges for evaluating visitor’s needs and facilitating opportunities to create NPS mandated emotional and intellectual connections to the site. 

All visitors to Sites of Conscience experience a degree of injury, whether that injury results from the trauma of the injustice, empathy for the victims of the injustice, guilt over perceived culpability in perpetrating the injustice, or the emotional injury and trauma that results from questioning and accusing the motivations and actions of an institutionalized belief system that the visitor may still be part of.  With a mandate to facilitate an emotional connection with the site, it is critical for the staff at Sites of Conscience to realize that the nature of this connection will most likely be an injury. Director’s Order  #6  Section 6.1.2 further clarifies the role of informal interpretation:

“[a]n informal visitor contact is an encounter between a visitor and an interpreter in which the objectives are defined by the visitor’s needs.”  

If the commonality of the visitors to a Site of Conscience is an emotional injury, then the common “need” of the visitor is for healing.  

Healing emotional injury and trauma requires a complex, cyclical process involving:  1) recognizing the emotional response; 2) acknowledging that the response is rooted in emotional injury and trauma; 3) understanding the origins of that injury.  Sites of Conscience provide the venue and informal interpretation can provide the facilitation for healing.  Most visitors to Sites of Conscience have already acknowledged that they have an emotional response to the event.  It is, in fact, this emotional response that draws these visitors to the site in the first place. The physical visit to the site establishes the connection between emotional injury and cause.  The interpretive materials and interactions at the site provide the intellectual understanding of how and why the injury happened.  The role of informal interpretation at Sites of Conscience is to facilitate this process.  A first visit a Site of Conscience may be emotionally overwhelming for a visitor attempting to understand the source of their injury.  Subsequent visits continue to provide an emotional response, each one slightly different and with new understanding and awareness.  Each subsequent visit provides the visitor with the opportunity to touch and verify that the injury was and continues to be real and to bring new awareness into the source of the injury.  This is the cyclical nature of healing.

There are several pitfalls for the interpreter at a Site of Conscience that may interfere with visitors’ making the emotional and intellectual connections with the site that they need to work through their individual processes of healing.  These pitfalls include: empathy, level of emotional comfort, personal belief systems, and forgiveness. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA