{"title":"Empathy, caring and compassion: Toward a Freudian critique of nursing work.","authors":"Michael Traynor","doi":"10.1111/nup.12399","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The aim of this paper is to summarize key psychoanalytic concepts first developed by Sigmund Freud and apply them to a critical exploration of three terms that are central to nursing's self-image-empathy, caring, and compassion. Looking to Menzies-Lyth's work, I suggest that the nurse's strong identification as a carer can be understood as a fantasy of being the one who is cared for; critiques by Freud and others of empathy point to the possibility of it being, in reality, a form of projective identification; reading Lacan and Žižek, I propose that repeated research into caring and repeated complaint about barriers to caring can be understood as manifestations of the death drive first posited by Freud. I conclude that psychoanalytic insights suggest that caring roles can raise profoundly ambivalent issues for those who care but they can also point the way to freedom from painful and self-destructive symptoms inherent in such work.</p>","PeriodicalId":49724,"journal":{"name":"Nursing Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10078227/pdf/","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Nursing Philosophy","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12399","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"NURSING","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to summarize key psychoanalytic concepts first developed by Sigmund Freud and apply them to a critical exploration of three terms that are central to nursing's self-image-empathy, caring, and compassion. Looking to Menzies-Lyth's work, I suggest that the nurse's strong identification as a carer can be understood as a fantasy of being the one who is cared for; critiques by Freud and others of empathy point to the possibility of it being, in reality, a form of projective identification; reading Lacan and Žižek, I propose that repeated research into caring and repeated complaint about barriers to caring can be understood as manifestations of the death drive first posited by Freud. I conclude that psychoanalytic insights suggest that caring roles can raise profoundly ambivalent issues for those who care but they can also point the way to freedom from painful and self-destructive symptoms inherent in such work.
期刊介绍：
Nursing Philosophy provides a forum for discussion of philosophical issues in nursing. These focus on questions relating to the nature of nursing and to the phenomena of key relevance to it. For example, any understanding of what nursing is presupposes some conception of just what nurses are trying to do when they nurse. But what are the ends of nursing? Are they to promote health, prevent disease, promote well-being, enhance autonomy, relieve suffering, or some combination of these? How are these ends are to be met? What kind of knowledge is needed in order to nurse? Practical, theoretical, aesthetic, moral, political, ''intuitive'' or some other?
Papers that explore other aspects of philosophical enquiry and analysis of relevance to nursing (and any other healthcare or social care activity) are also welcome and might include, but not be limited to, critical discussions of the work of nurse theorists who have advanced philosophical claims (e.g., Benner, Benner and Wrubel, Carper, Schrok, Watson, Parse and so on) as well as critical engagement with philosophers (e.g., Heidegger, Husserl, Kuhn, Polanyi, Taylor, MacIntyre and so on) whose work informs health care in general and nursing in particular.
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