The CEA Forum

Summer/Fall 2005: 34.2

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Book Review:

Empathic Teaching: Education for Life . By Jeffrey Berman. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004.

by Lisa Beckelhimer, University of Cincinnati

In Empathic Teaching: Education for Life, Jeffrey Berman examines how teachers can play a therapeutic role in the classroom without being therapists. This book builds on Berman's previous works describing his pedagogy of personal writing, including Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom; Surviving Literary Suicide; and Diaries to an English Professor: Pain and Growth in the Classroom. His goal is to show how to use writing to create an empathic atmosphere that allows students and professors to “understand another person's feelings and thoughts . . .” (32). But the methods he details might lead some readers to believe they that must, indeed, be therapists.

Overview

Berman argues that empathic teaching “leads to empathic learning: students becoming more sensitive to and connected with their classmates' lives. Empathic teaching also leads to empathic learning for the educator: teacher and student learn more about each other in this relational paradigm” (32). The introduction offers as evidence a gut-wrenching letter from a former student who says Berman “saved” him from suicide by recognizing his “creative powers” (10). Berman says he received Ben's writing just as he was wondering if he made a difference in students' lives.

To create the empathic classroom atmosphere he claims makes that difference, Berman employs several methods. One involves reading aloud (with their permission) students' personal writing, sometimes to the point that both professor and students openly cry in class. Another requires students to read and respond to some painful and even agonizing texts such as William Styron's depression narrative Darkness Visible, Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz , and D.M. Thomas' classic account of rape and murder in The White Hotel. Another assignment requires students to write what Berman calls “self-disclosing” essays about difficult family relationships.

After the gripping introduction, Berman unfortunately begins with a chapter about novels and films—such as Evan Hunter's The Blackboard Jungle and the popular film Dead Poet's Society— that show teachers he views as difference-makers. It's not that the titles aren't interesting, but against the backdrop of real classroom trauma, the fictional works seem unrealistic and hence less powerful.

The next few chapters highlight Berman's extensive experience in psychoanalytic theory, experience which most readers will no doubt lack. Berman dismisses Freud, whom he says urges us to model ourselves after the surgeon, “who puts aside all his feelings, even his human sympathy” (95) in favor of Heinz Kohut, who defines empathy as the “power that counteracts man's tendency toward seeing meaninglessness and feeling despair” (95-96). Berman discusses such concepts as empathic listening, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, mourning, and forgiveness.

The meat of Berman's book comes in the excruciating student writing of Chapters Three and Four, where Berman analyzes the results of his self-disclosing pedagogy. He warns early that teachers who encourage self-disclosure must set parameters to prevent putting students at risk emotionally. For example, he allows students to remain anonymous when sharing their writing, grades personal essays pass/fail, and asks each class not to offer advice or judge another student's ideas.

Student Reactions

Much of the student work provides evidence for both Berman's argument that his philosophy works and his critics' that it endangers students. For example, one student, Christine, wrote in a diary response to Levi's Survival in Auschwitz: “I think this is the most disturbing, bleakest, novel that I have ever read in my entire life. . . . I awoke from the nightmares and went into the kitchen late last night. I saw a sharp knife and I thought, maybe if I cut myself a little, it would make the pain stop. I made a small nick in my arm, just a few drops of blood, and I thought that maybe I felt a tiny bit better. . . . I looked in horror at what I had done and dropped the knife to the floor” (337-338).

Berman admits that Christine's was the most extreme reaction from this class of more than 50 students. He asks himself and readers an essential question: “Does Christine's identification with Primo Levi lead to traumatization or catharsis?” (339). He concludes that the reading was cathartic because Christine said in her final exam that the course helped her realize that she wasn't alone in her depression. Still, Berman says, “Opponents . . . will argue that Christine's story dramatizes the inherent dangers of the self-disclosing classroom. Surely the potential for danger exists, and at times I wondered whether the course was appropriate for her, at least during this time in her life” (340-341).

Overall responses to Berman's courses range from a “weight lifted from my shoulders” (186) to “another gut-wrenching assignment” (185). Several student evaluations resemble therapy sessions more than English classes, including these: “I learned that it's a lot more difficult to forgive than to hold onto anger” (266) and “Recovering from my traumatic depression I knew that being able to write out everything would be a means of recovery for me in many ways” (330).

Berman doesn't hide unfavorable student comments, such as a graduate looking back who says his writing in the course seems “melodramatic” to him now (263). And then there is Rich, a student opposed to the whole concept of self-disclosing writing, who says: “No matter what you tell your students about their degree of disclosure or what relationship you feel you may have with them, the simple fact remains that you are their teacher, and they your students. No matter how many times you tell them that it does not matter if they are personal with their writings, or that they do not have to read it in class they WILL feel pressured to do so, be it out of fear or as an attempt to gain your favor” (343). Rich even refers to the comments of professor emeritus Pierre Woog, who read Berman's research in the Chronicle of Higher Education and wrote a letter to the editor accusing him of “ravaging young minds” (360). “While I don't think it is that extreme,” says Rich, “I do agree with the fact that it is wrong to encourage such disclosures” (343).

Conclusion

In the final chapter, "Risky Teaching," Berman spends considerable time defending his pedagogy. He admits that he has been called a pervert and a voyeur but insists that he is neither and that his research enhances the body of knowledge regarding classroom empathy. “My contribution,” he says, “is to show how empathy and self-disclosure can be combined safely and productively in the classroom” (374).

Berman ends by attempting to answer his initial question: “Would literature teachers need to be ‘natural therapists' in order to apply my approach to their own classrooms?” He concludes, “I don't think so. I can imagine that teachers will feel anxious at first when receiving personal writings on emotionally charged topics such as divorce, depression, and suicide, but they will become more experienced over time. They will learn, along with their students, that traumatic knowledge creates the opportunity for posttraumatic growth” (375).

Readers must decide whether or not they feel qualified or are willing to invite such trauma into their classrooms. Thanks to Berman's extensive research and student writing examples that decision should not be difficult to make.

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