Analysis Of Haley Jo Hyde s The Red Cliff Indian...

Ask Haley Jo Hyde, 19, what makes her empathetic, and she ll mention her childhood on Wisconsin s Red Cliff Indian Reservation or her struggles leaving an abusive relationship. Talk to Nick Thompson, 37, and he ll refer to the challenges he overcame to enroll in college as a nontraditional student. A Moving Target Say the word empathy around social workers and most will recognize it as a professional must-have, even if they can t tell you exactly what it means. Scholars also disagree about the definition of empathy and what it looks like in social work practice. According to some, empathy occurs when a person takes on the feelings of another—the sadness of losing a loved one or the joy of landing a job—as if sharing that experience. Indeed, the Social Work Dictionary defines empathy as the act of perceiving, understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state and ideas of another person (Barker, 2003). Others separate empathy into its cognitive and affec tive forms, that is, a rational understanding of a person s situation vs. a feeling of shared emotions. According to V. Suthakaran, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, this dichotomy mirrors the one found in cognitive experiential self theory. That theory claims that humans rely on two systems to process information: one tapping into logical thought and one relying on personal experience or intuition (Epstein, 1994). Still others say that empathy