The Effort to Empathize

Carl Rogers was a psychotherapist who wrote about communication—how to practice it, how difficult it is, and why it matters. He did some of his most important writing during the 1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War, and clearly understood all too well what was at stake if and when communication failed. His theories were adopted by rhetorician scholars in the 1970s and packaged in composition textbooks as Rogerian Argument. This approach to dealing with the opposition (also known as refutation or the Latin refutatio) was grounded in empathy and concession. It served as an alternative to Aristotelian Argument—derived from Aristotle—where the goal is to “win” an argument by overwhelming an opponent with evidence or discrediting their arguments: A Rogerian opponent plays nice, while an Aristotelian makes you wish you’d stayed home to drink hot chocolate and knit. Christopher Hitchens, for example, was a master of Aristotelian argument. Carl Rogers is Mr. Rogers: he wants kindness, civility, inclusivity, growth, understanding. He’s the OG of empathy.

Rogers realized that we often take a judgmental stance when in discussion, that we tend to approve or disapprove what we’re hearing based on our own frame of reference—from our individual point of view. This tendency is what David Foster Wallace referred to as our “default setting.” Rogers writes, “Although the tendency to make evaluations is common in almost all interchange of language, it is very much heightened in those situations where feelings and emotions are deeply involved. So the stronger our feelings, the more likely it is that there will be no mutual element in the communication. There will be just two ideas, two feelings, two judgments, missing each other in psychological space.” Thus, we can’t communicate because we’re not listening with any real understanding. Rogers knew that when the emotional stakes were high, people would feel attacked and become defensive when their positions were challenged, and rather than remaining open to discussion, would close themselves off.

What would it mean, he asks, to approach disagreement differently? What if we practiced seeing the issue from the other person’s point of view? Rogers thought that if we could demonstrate to others that we were really listening—listening with understanding—it might soften the other person: “If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him, if I can see its personal meaning for him, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in him.” But he was also convinced that this empathetic listening would change us too: “Once you have been able to see the other’s point of view, your own comments will have to be drastically revised. You will also find the emotion going out of the discussion, the differences being reduced, and those differences which remain being of a rational and understandable sort.”

Ah, is it possible? He had a practical strategy of what that might look like. Here’s a summary: When Person A speaks, Person B should not just simply respond, but really listen to Person A; and before responding, Person B should summarize what they heard from Person A—in a fair way that makes Person A feel heard. And maybe instead of trying to be 100 percent right, both Persons A and B might end up conceding that the other has made some good points. The two may even be able to find areas for compromise or at least take a more rational approach to finding solutions.

When we talked about this in my college argument class, I asked the students to imagine practicing this on someone with whom they bitterly and fundamentally disagreed, someone they felt little or no respect for. It would be difficult of course. Rogers understood this. He also knew that this kind of work takes courage: If we really hear and understand someone else’s point of view, we run the risk of being changed ourselves.

That main tenet of Rogerian Argument that I come back to time and time again is that for it to work, you must accept that the person you disagree with is in fact as a person of goodwill. When I think of this person, it’s helpful to me to think that he and I have, in general, similar goals—we want to be able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness; we both desire work that isn’t drudgery; a refuge we can call home; access to good food and clean drinking water; healthcare; good schools; the ability to raise our kids in decent communities; some degree of autonomy. It’s the means of achieving those goals that we often disagree on.

I’ve implemented Rogerian Argument with many people, including relatives, with whom I disagree on anything from Trump to gun control to immigration, and indeed have found the practice useful and beneficial. Because it’s not a combative approach to debate, Rogerian Argument can work well during the holidays!

However, it has its limits. Etched in my memory is a time in Missouri when I lost an argument about abortion. It was an awful feeling. Every point I brought up he shot down. I tried to find common ground. He scoffed. I became increasingly frustrated; he kept his cool. Years later I realized what had transpired: it was a classic case of Rogers arguing with Aristotle. And I, Rogers proxy, ended up hiding in the bushes, tears of defeat falling into my Coors Light.

Oftentimes it. feels like the loudest, most partisan voices are calling for banning abortion entirely. Would a Rogerian approach be effective at all with them? Is the hope of finding common ground through empathy and achieving reasoned compromise just naïve? It’s hard to take a Rogerian approach when you know what’s at stake.

Alan Guttmacher knew. A decade-old article from The New Yorker, “Birthright: What’s Next for Planned Parenthood” by Jill Lepore, one of my favorite journalists, explained the role of Guttmacher, “the chief of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Hospital and a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia who became the president of Planned Parenthood in 1962.” Lepore explains Guttmacher’s motivation: “As a young intern in the nineteen-twenties, Guttmacher had watched a woman die of a botched abortion and had never forgotten it.”

After 1973, when Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in all 50 states, a protester showed up to one of Guttmacher’s lecture’s wearing a surgeon’s gown painted in red with the word “Murderer.” Afterward, he wrote in Readers Digest that “those who oppose and those who favor legalization of abortion share a common goal—the elimination of all abortion” through better, safer, cheaper contraception, because, as he saw it, “each abortion bespeaks medical or social failure.” The statement earned Guttmacher “plenty of hate mail,” and not long after, he passed away.

Wouldn’t it be something if abortions were drastically reduced, not because the procedure wasn’t available, but because the number of unwanted and unplanned pregnancies plummeted for good reasons—because young people had received comprehensive sex education (not abstinence only); because everyone had access to free and reliable contraception; because women and girls were no longer being coerced into sex or raped? In an idealistic world, there would be no demand for abortion.

It’s not, however, an idealistic world.

Update on the Texas abortion law: The Supreme Court has decided once again to allow the law to stand but has also agreed to review it next week, Monday, November 1.  A story on NPR by Nina Totenberg quoted from Justice Sotomayor’s filed dissent:

"The promise of future adjudication offers cold comfort, however, for Texas women seeking abortion care, who are entitled to relief now. These women will suffer personal harm from delaying their medical care, and as their pregnancies progress, they may even be unable to obtain abortion care altogether.

"There are women in Texas who became pregnant on or around the day that S. B. 8 took effect [September 1, 2021]. As I write these words, some of those women do not know they are pregnant. When they find out, should they wish to exercise their constitutional right to seek abortion care, they will be unable to do so anywhere in their home State. Those with sufficient resources may spend thousands of dollars and multiple days anxiously seeking care from out-of-state providers so overwhelmed with Texas patients that they cannot adequately serve their own communities. Those without the ability to make this journey, whether due to lack of money or childcare or employment flexibility or the myriad other constraints that shape people's day-to-day lives, may be forced to carry to term against their wishes or resort to dangerous methods of self-help."

It seems to me that Sotomayor’s argument is neither Rogerian nor Aristotelian. She simply identifies the people with the most at stake and empathizes with them, making her argument respectfully, yet clearly and firmly. Her concern for these women is palpable. Guttmacher understood all too well what she meant by “dangerous methods” and made it his entire life’s work to provide safe alternatives.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.