Empathy, caring and compassion: toward a Freudian critique of nursing work

Traynor, Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2065-8374 (2022) Empathy, caring and compassion: toward a Freudian critique of nursing work. Nursing Philosophy , e12399. ISSN 1466-7681 [Article] (Published online first) (doi:10.1111/nup.12399)

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to summarise key psychoanalytic concepts first developed by Sigmund Freud and apply them to a critical exploration of three terms that are central to nursing’s self-image—empathy, caring and compassion. Looking to Menzies-Lyth’s work I suggest that the nurse’s strong identification as carer can be understood as a fantasy of being the one who is cared for; critiques by Freud and others of empathy point to the possibility of it being, in reality, a form of projective identification; reading Lacan and Žižek I propose that repeated research into caring and repeated complaint about barriers to caring can be understood as manifestations of the death drive first posited by Freud. I conclude that psychoanalytic insights suggest that caring roles can raise profoundly ambivalent issues for those who care but they can also point the way to freedom from painful and self-destructive symptoms inherent in such work.

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