a “submarine-man” myself i use “echo-sound-reading” to orientate in society. that’s a great thing until you get to someone who functions exactly in the same way as you do… that can come to a weird kind of vice versa scanning where you get no signals back – can be a funny sensation – as if you both do not exist.
- at university i shared a flat with a person of the same quality. it was actually quite terrible. when ever we were alone in the apartment there was a terribly weird kind of all-consuming atmosphere. we learnt to get along by always having a third topic to speak about. so we never really communicated directly – but always over art, cinema, theory etc… and eventually both looked for alternative housing.

the other thing:
i had a terribly impressive and really nice sensation of being scanned when swimming with dolphins once.
and i had a similar sensation when giving a speech to an audience in china in english. the audience usually understands english good or not so good – but it always seems to me as if they all are trying to read you beyond (or instead of) the word – they are trying to feel the speakers substance in order to judge him.
…

to come to the point now:
speaking from my own experience: ritualized communication – or introducing rituals into the communication – is a good way for empathic people to communicate in possibly difficult situations

Sorry if that’s overly long and arcane.

There was also an interesting piece in today’s Times about the limits of empathy for psychotherapists. This link should work, but, with the Times, you never know: http://tinyurl.com/l4dct

A couple of tangential comments:

As someone who began life as a mathematician, I would say that the heads of most mathematicians are not filled with numbers, but rather with structures and relationships. Most of modern mathematics (since the mid-19th century) has been about the relationships between abstract objects, of which numbers are only one, not very important, example. A person can indeed be a great mathematician and know next to nothing about numbers or number theory, and in fact never ever think about them. Even in number theory, abstract concepts and their relationships are more important than actual numbers.

I wonder if the empathy with others you speak of is related to one of the human intelligences identified by Howard Gardner — the ability to read the emotions of others. What has always interested me is how many people I meet who lack another of Gardner’s intelligences: the ability to read one’s own emotions. Perhaps it the technology/IT circles I move in, but lots of people I meet are not able to diagnose their own emotional state, and one can often see their body language or other actions belying their words.