If some emphasize the importance of empathy as the essential tool for achieving a better civil society (Nussbaum 1996) and dealing with prominent global issues such as climate crisis (Rifkin 2009), others believe that empathy can “motivate cruelty and aggression and lead to burnout and exhaustion” (Bloom 2017, p.
157), the value of empathy has been up for debate. Commonly defined as “feeling as others” (Hein and Singer 2008, p. In the last thirty years, the notion of empathy has gained great attention within academia. We ultimately advance Narrative Medicine as an approach to introduce, teach and promote such an attitude among medical trainees and practitioners. Following this line of reasoning, we advance the notion of ‘empathic concern’, a re-conceptualization of clinical empathy that finds its source in Halpern in Med Health Care Philos (2014) 17:301–311 engaged curiosity. Finally, we advocate for a more encompassing, holistic conception of clinical empathy one that gives value to a genuine interest in welcoming, acknowledging and responding to the emotions of those suffering. We thus consider the negative impacts that this categorization brings about.
In particular, we present the dichotomous conception of clinical empathy that is articulated in the debate around cognitive empathy and affective empathy. We then pass on to a structured overview of the debate surrounding the notion of clinical empathy and its taxonomy in the medical setting. In this paper, we first evaluate the limits of the Western mainstream medical culture and discuss the origins of phenomena such as dehumanization and detached concern as well as their impacts on patient care. As empathy gains importance within academia, we propose this review as an attempt to bring clarity upon the diverse and widely debated definitions and conceptions of empathy within the medical field.