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Quote by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is. "If you see dignity in anything, in fact--it doesn't have to be human--you will still want to understand it and help it. Many people are now seeing dignity in the lower animals and the plant world and waterfalls and deserts--and even in the entire planet and its atmosphere. And now they are helpless not to want to understand and help those things. "Poor souls!”

Quote by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Work

Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

This book is a compilation of the author's personal stories and insights, offering a rich tapestry of life's journey through various lenses and moments. more

Author

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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“If you knew what is was like to be another person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain? The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that imaginative part was just missing. It could be that they were born that way--with something missing from their brains--or it could be that they became like that because they were never taught by their parents to sympathise with others.”

“Therapy must begin with empathy - not a patronizing sympathy, but instead one that is unflinching (Marotta, 2003). Empathy of this sort is highly attuned to the client, no matter the circumstance. The therapist strives to "travel in the client's shoes" or to "view the world from the client's perspective" in order to really understand his or her emotions, cognitions, and beliefs - in short, to understand from the perspective of the other (Wilson & Thomas, 2004). Treatment involves understanding that a client's defeatist and apparently helpless, disempowered, or "masochistic" perspectives can be a logical outgrowth of formative traumatic experiences and, further, may be highly creative means of self-protection. The therapist must not attempt to undo or "make up for" past abandonment or betrayals by their client's caregivers or in their close relationships, but instead first understand the client's perspective and approach to the world, while working to provide alternative perspectives on both past and present that promote change.”