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(More customer reviews)Zero Degrees of Empathy is 360 degrees of BS.
Simon-Cohen posits a very forced empathy-based construct, to explain Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorders, for example.
Those of us who have decades of clinical experience working with these disorders can readily see Cohen's forumlations as far too simplistic, at best, and, at worst, ignorant!
For example, Cohen makes NO allowance for the fact that many (classical) sociopaths are exquisitely sensitive to every nuance of the feelings of others -- which they then EXPLOIT with great skill.
Back to the drawing board, Dr. Cohen.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. Simon Baron-Cohen
Simon Baron-Cohen, expert in autism and developmental psychopathology, has always wanted to isolate and understand the factors that cause people to treat others as if they were mere objects. In this book he proposes a radical shift, turning the focus away from evil and on to the central factor, empathy. Unlike the concept of evil, he argues, empathy has real explanatory power. Putting empathy under the microscope he explores four new ideas: firstly, that we all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum, from high to low, from six degrees to zero degrees. Secondly, that deep within the brain lies the 'empathy circuit'. How this circuit functions determines where we lie on the empathy spectrum. Thirdly, that empathy is not only something we learn but that there are also genes associated with empathy. And fourthly, while a lack of empathy leads to mostly negative results, is it always negative? Full of original research, "Zero Degrees of Empathy" presents a new way of understanding what it is that leads individuals down negative paths, and challenges all of us to consider replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-erosion.
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