One must be of several minds at once. The only way to experience empathy is to find and retain a degree of separation from one’s own self. There must be several voices that do not harmonize; there will be discordance and interruption. This is necessary for thought.
Action is straightforward: a person can be a singular entity when she acts but must have several entities while in thought. Thought is inherently discursive. If there is only one voice, it is not considered thought. Inclination––“I think I’ll have some coffee”––rote belief, or ideology––these are not thought. The activity of thinking requires a plurality of self.
Empathy is a strange feeling. Feeling? Not quite. A prerequisite for empathy is the ability to acquire and retain for certain periods perspectives that are not your own…for this reason, perhaps those afflicted with schizophrenia or dissociative disorders––who think thoughts “not their own”––have the capacity for some of the most empathic dispositions around. The split self––as long as it can be integrated when it comes to action, belief, and so on––is the single most effective contribution to a multi-perspectival, and therefore likely truer, worldview.
A splitting of the self occurs in trauma. The narrative is fractured but continues on, unimaginably. You are who you were before x event, and who you are after. You are now two. Synthesis can only be drawn from disparate parts––it is discordance itself that constitutes the mosaic.
In this way, traumatized individuals may have the potential to experience both heightened empathy and a broader multiplicity of avenues of thought. Or maybe I just need a crumb of validation. Cheers!