The Healing Power of Real Human Attention

"Over the ensuing decades, use of the word empathy exploded beyond the field of psychology, becoming central to how humans discuss understanding one another. Most therapists understand empathy to be foundational to therapeutic practice and essential to its success. Research has demonstrated that empathy is a primary contributor to the strength of positive therapeutic outcomes. It's a term so well-researched and operationalized that we rarely even question the origin of this obvious human faculty of fellow-feeling."

"It is intriguing to learn that Titchener coined another word, attensity, that might be even more important than empathy in describing what therapists do. Titchener's research involved understanding human attention through introspection; he coined the term "attensity" in the course of that work. He wanted a word for the power of attention itself-separate from the mere force of sensory perception. You could measure the strength of a stimulus-its "intensity" (how loud or how bright?). However, measuring the power of actual attention was something else."

Edward Titchener coined both empathy and attensity; empathy entered widespread use while attensity disappeared. Attensity described the qualitative power of attention distinct from sensory intensity and required introspective study. Early twentieth-century behavioral psychologists narrowed attention into measurable, stimulus-driven constructs, marginalizing introspective concepts like attensity. Contemporary attention models emphasize quantification and capture, enabling commercial systems that monetize attention. The rise of the attention economy engineered human attention at scale and produced extensive social and individual harms. Therapeutic practice privileges empathy, but attention's qualitative dimensions may be central to inner experience and healing.

Read at Psychology Today