EFFECT OF LABKOVSKY AND DEFICIENCY OF MALE EMPATHY

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

A little bit of theoretical information to prevent victim-blaming "why they go to such specialists, is it really incomprehensible."

Now, when the number of views of Mikhail Labkovsky's interview with Irina Shikhman is already almost 2 million views, it is impossible to deny its popularity, whatever their nature, and it is the phenomenon of popularity, rather than its theoretical basis, that is much more important to discuss from a psychological point of view.

I think this interview is useful to watch through fem optics. Just imagine if there were a woman psychologist in Labkovsky's place, and most of her clients were men. Would she be just as popular and in demand with similar looks? Would she be forgiven for such superficial views of psychological problems and the simplification of therapeutic dynamics? Could she show the same self-confidence (no matter real or apparent)? Could she be so easy to label, deny responsibility, and easily insert harsh words of judgment into a professional monologue? Or is it the effect of the father on the playground, which will almost always become an object of admiration (“wow! talks like that, indulges / too strict, etc.)?

So what actually sells the image of the psychologist Labkovsky? And why, as they say, is it here and now that these sales are so successful? I think that first of all, he sells the Empathic Man, which in our latitudes is such a rare commodity that they are ready to pay much more for it than for American jeans during the collapse of the empire.

- genes are to blame for everything, - it's all about hormones, - we are all shaped by the environment.

The first group of studies says that the difference between men and women in the ability to read the states of others is so deeply embedded in our genes that not only can be traced in the pre-verbal period of a child, but this difference is also present in some species of animals (we are talking about emotional infection, reading facial expressions, infection by yawning, reaction to stress of another individual, etc. for which words are not required) [1]. Pop psychological retellings of this idea are expressed by the formula "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus."

The second category of hypotheses is based on the fact that although biological factors are responsible for empathy, but DNA only indirectly affects the manifestation of empathy, that is, with the help of hormones, DNA only determines their level at each moment of time - the more oxytocin, the more empathy the the more testosterone, the less it is. [2] And since hormones are a very individual indicator - men and women have both oxytocin and testosterone, this explains why it happens that some men are much more empathic than some women.

And, of course, the social hypothesis about the observed difference: our brain is plastic, we are adaptive, genetics is a library, and the reader's environment - whatever he asks for, the library will give out that book (where the book is, respectively, the hormone that regulates the process of empathy). That is, society actively requires women to be present in systems of the human-to-human type and the brain has no choice but to react to this with a greater development of empathy and demand these books from the library again and again, and then give them out to those who did not ask. [3] If such books are not available or just a couple, and readers demand and demand, then we are talking about pathologies of the autism spectrum - the relationship between empathy and mental disorders is studied separately [4]

Most likely, the truth is somewhere in the center of this three-factor triangle. This is very beautifully described in this article [5], in which the author compares all these three levels with a nesting doll (Russian doll), where each relies on the previous one: the core is genetics, then the development process and at the end the environment. He believes that all three directions can exist on their own without contradicting each other and that each person is a unique combination of many factors, in which the genetic contribution is only one of the components.

Why such a long digression? Well, except because I like to talk about how theoretical science very specifically affects our daily life and that psychology is also like a science, and not “yesterday, on the full moon, there was an Aries in a Taurus and both were at their zenith, so get a divorce of course” ? This mini review in order to shake the confidence that a man, in principle, is not capable of empathy, that for him this is an alien world, genetically inaccessible to him. This idea normalizes all non-empathic men without in the least removes the need for empathy on their part. It is this attitude that creates the deficit of empathic men. And where is the deficit, so are the speculators.

The professional aptitude of a practicing psychologist, first of all, is a high level of empathy, the ability to take the place of another, to go very far beyond the scope of one's life experience, the ability to move away from one's Self for the sake of the Self of another case), so it is not surprising that where the myth of the inaccessibility of empathy to men is strong, psychology becomes a female profession. In Russia, even the dean's office of any psychology department of a capital university, even the organizer of psychological training in the village of Novye Vyshki, will tell you about these statistics.

The consequences of the lack of empathic men can be seen not only in the fact that it is around the psychologists of men that the cult of his teachings most often arises. Women who have lost years of their lives with an abuser often say that it took them so long to get out of this relationship precisely because there WAS empathy. It must be remembered that empathy is not a good in itself, it is only a tool in the hands of a specific person. In the case of the abuser, firstly, it allows manipulating the victim (in order to manipulate, you need to be able to create the consciousness of another in your head), and secondly, it gave hope that these crumbs of empathy that the abuser gave out less and less often in the intervals between emotional / physical / sexual / financial violence, can become constant food, you just have to try and endure.

But there is also an important point in the Labkovsky effect - he is a man who speaks on “women's sacred topics”: marriage, family, parents, relationship building. This is the plot where society allows a woman to self-actualize, albeit under strict pressure from the rules as it is necessary and how it is not necessary. And as a consequence, responsibility for the relationship for its beginning, formalization and preservation falls on one side, setting the task of clapping with one hand. Plus, as we know, in society there is a rudiment of wild tribes that resettled women for "these dirty days" in separate huts, and now this can be manifested in the fact that not every man, going to the supermarket, can buy feminine hygiene products [6]. Perhaps the same attitude is also to the topics that a “real man” should label in his speech as “these are your women’s affairs”.

So Labkovsky is not afraid of these topics, and since women have now become solvent, and sometimes even more than men, he talks about what is really important and familiar to them and, moreover, attracts by the very fact of talking to these themes. And with this effect, by the way, it seems to me, is connected so much to many of his, sometimes edifying and detached, and sometimes rude tone - all the same, these are women's affairs and when you talk about them, it is necessary to emphasize what is perceived in culture as “masculinity”, remind the interlocutor that we are still on different sides and, as the Romans said, what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to a bull.

But that's not all, as it seems to me.

There is a series of books "the psychology of children's drawing" where the central diagnostic drawing for a child is the drawing of the family - and how often you can see in the examples of problem families collected there, the father is portrayed behind a book, TV or telephone, his face (the main channel of empathic communication) is not drawn - it is closed by a book / computer or it is depicted from the back of the head and it is interesting to see in dynamics how over the years what was once viewed as a normal family is still considered today as a problem of the “absent father” - physically or emotionally (in no case is it it is not about diagnoses by drawing - drawing is always a reason to talk to the child). And the lack of an emotional connection with the father is really considered today as a risk factor for the development of the child and is the subject of numerous studies. [7]

If we simplify the consequences of the effect of the “absent father” effect, then women are more likely to experience fear, pain, depression and a sense of loss in interpersonal relationships, while men are more likely to show aggression in relationships (most likely this happens because society allows men to respond to certain feelings and women in different ways: self-hatred / hate towards others). Perhaps that is why women often become clients of a psychologist, since they are used to looking for the reason in themselves, and not at all because men do not need it.

Thus, the Labkovsky phenomenon, in my opinion, is at the junction of several different phenomena that converged at a specific historical moment in a specific society: the phenomenon of women from the generation of absent fathers, women surrounded by men who consider empathy not masculine and the division of public space into male and female themes, where the family is referred to female themes, although it is assumed that this is a union of a man and a woman. He is not the first, and he is not the last, who intuitively felt the vacuum of emotional connection with a male figure, but a conversation in the public space of a man about “female topics” with a matured request. I think through trial and error, public lectures and a private reception, he intuitively grasped this market need and decided what he decided.

But the worst thing that can be done, in my opinion, not agreeing with his views and approaches is to engage in victim blaming - to tell people who were looking for help and did not find it “why I went to such a specialist, was it really incomprehensible”. Blaming those who are thirsty and go for the mirage of the watering hole will only exacerbate the problem.

Perhaps Labkovsky realizes what a rare commodity he manages to trade in times of scarcity, but the mistake, in my very, very subjective opinion, is that, of course, you can sell nutritious drinks for a lot of money in the besieged city, extolling their effectiveness, but only then it turns out that this is a "zero calorie stake" and it does not satisfy hunger, but temporarily deceives him. Although those who were not hungry can buy it to quench their thirst, enjoy the taste and go further, wondering "oh well, it's delicious and in general no one forces you to buy." Well, let's assume that a book on empathy has disappeared somewhere in the genetic library of such a commentator.

Links from text:

[1] Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior

[2] Briefly and popularly about it here: Genes Can't Explain Why Men Are Less Empathetic Than Women.

livescience.com/61987-empathy-women-men.html

[3] This study noted that empathy grows in women over time: Are Women More Empathetic than Men? A longitudinal study in adlescence

[4] Genome-wide analyzes of self-reported empathy: correlations with autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia nervosa

[5] Gender differerence in human empathy. Theories on the Timbergen four "why's"

[6] By the way, on this topic, there is a good book by Jack Parker "Very Womanish Affairs" (In the original "The Great Mystery of Menstruation: Time to End Taboos as Old as the World").

[7] The Causal Effects of Father Absence