The Center for Practical Child and Adolescent Therapy Techniques

Dr. David A. Crenshaw, Director  

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"Heartfelt Feelings" Coloring Card Strategy.  Click here for details.                 

Read Dr. Crenshaw's articles in Play Therapy magazine by clicking on title: "Should I Be Worried?"  "Selective Mutism" "Preverbal Trauma" "No Time or Place for Child's Play" reprinted with permission of Play Therapy Magazine.

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"The Empathic Healer"

 By David A. Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP

     Are the days of the empathic healer numbered? Is the empathic healer an endangered species? This question was raised in the title of a thought- provoking book by Harvard psychiatrist Michael Bennett (2001). In a fast paced world seeking quick fixes to all that ails them and a managed health care system forever trying to squeeze the health care providers and patients to wring out costs to maximize corporate profits, has the heart gone out of the health care system?

     My colleague Kenneth V. Hardy, Ph.D., Director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in New York City and I (2005) have addressed this issue in a recent book chapter on traumatized and aggressive youth in the child welfare system.  We do not deny that a significant number of people are helped by psychiatric medications that have been developed, especially in the last two decades, and we recognize these medications have relieved the mental suffering of countless people. We believe with great conviction, however, that children and youth (not to mention adults) still need and perhaps, more so in today’s world, an empathic healer to listen to their story.  

     We have learned through our clinical experience that children, adolescents and families will only tell their story in the presence of an empathic healer. Children, and even animals, can tell when someone really cares and when they don’t and they are never fooled. As far as we know there is no pharmaceutical remedy, no pill of any kind that can heal a hole in the heart of a child, the crushing of the spirit of youth, the most devastating of all injuries. We believe as long as there is violence in our world, hatred among humans, poverty, crime, racial, class, and gender bias, there will remain the need for an empathic healer.

References: 

Bennett, M. (2001). The empathic healer: An endangered species. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. 

Crenshaw, D. A. & Hardy, K. V. (2005). Understanding and treating the aggression of traumatized children in out-of-home care. In N. B. Webb (ed.), Working with traumatized youth in child welfare, pp. 171-195. New York: Guilford Press.

Copyright © 2006 by David A. Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP.  All rights reserved.