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Approaching Child Abuse Treatment From the Perspective of Empathy

NCJ Number
170900
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 21 Issue: 12 Dated: (December 1997) Pages: 1191-1204
Author(s)
V R Wiehe
Date Published
1997
Length
14 pages
Annotation
Based on a literature review, this study identifies the importance of empathy in effective parenting; it suggests a variety of approaches to empathy training for abusive parents and parents at risk of becoming abusive.
Abstract
Marshall, Hudson, Jones, and Fernandez (1995) conceptualize empathy as consisting of a four-staged process: emotion recognition, perspective-taking, emotion replication, and response decision. "Emotion recognition" requires that a person be able to accurately discriminate the emotional state of another person. "Perspective-taking" refers to the ability to put oneself in the observed person's place and to see situations as that person views them. "Emotion replication" involves the replication by the observer as much as possible of the emotion observed. "Response decision" relates to the observer's decision to act or to not act on the feelings experienced in the previous state. The research literature suggests that empathy is a moderating variable in the expression of aggression. Studies also indicate that empathy is an important variable in parenting and a factor deficient in child abuse perpetrators. Although empathy training has been used in the treatment of adult and adolescent sexual abuse offenders, this treatment modality appears less often in the treatment of physical and emotional child abuse perpetrators. Child protective service workers and therapists treating physical and emotional child abuse perpetrators should experiment with various ways of increasing empathy in abusive parents and measure the effectiveness of such interventions. The efficacy of this intervention, however, must be measured longitudinally to determine whether the abusive behavior stops. 2 figures and 107 references