Key Points of the Empathic Movement:

1) A revival of classical studies as the basis for a cultured art, to be innovated through awareness, invention and study.

2) The rejection of the tabula rasa principle, underlining the importance of tradition, while trying to unmask any theoretical or applicative limits.

3) The importance of the concepts of “indivisibility” and “interdisciplinarity” in art.

4) The rejection of specialization in the artistic field.

5) The affirmation of an Artist figure more involved in civil society.

6) The development of emotional intelligence through the arts.

7) The development of the Arts through emotions.

8) The denunciation of excessive influences between artists due to the immediacy of the means of communication and therefore the condemnation of any form of plagiarism.

9) The search for the Total Artist (The Genius, capable of cultivating all the Arts in a high and parallel way; or the set of several subjects who empathetically unite to form this figure).

10) Overcoming the Western scientific-specialist model and therefore the logical-rational approach.

11) The rejection of the principles of “univocity of vision” (of objective truth) and instead embraces the principles of a fragmented “point of view” and the possibility of grasping subjective truths strengthened through interdisciplinary action.

Technical Points 

1) The use of a capital letter for each line in Contemporary Poetry appears to be an outdated, emphatic, and ultimately meaningless practice, which subtracts rather than adds, even from a purely grammatical standpoint. This, for example, cannot effectively accentuate the distinction between a literary text in verse and one in prose. However, empathetic openness to the style of others leaves poets room for choice, embracing every technical, stylistic, and content typology.

2) The only mistrust that Empathetic Poetry highlights (and believes to be necessary in the new Millennium) is towards a writing too uncultured and in turn unacceptable to be classified as “poetry,” which is always an elevation of language and concepts to a universal level.

3) Empathic philosophy welcomes the good that every philosophy and literary movement of the past has proposed and seems able to still be part of an innovative contemporary discourse for poetry, art as a whole and the collective mentality.

4) No philosophy should be considered definitive and the repository of absolute truths. Every philosophical "school" has attempted and continues to attempt to engage in dialogue and grasp presumed truths through the language it had or has at its disposal and through the greatest possible immersion in reflection.

5) Empathetic Poetry doesn't have specific techniques to recommend, but looks with admiration at anyone who knows how to "create poetry" using any technique, past or present, evaluating the results of the proposed text as a whole. However, new proposals, even from a technical standpoint, are welcome.

6) Art is: either Empathic or Narcissistic (the latter is to be considered a “non-Art” Art).

7) Against “non-Poetry” poetry that even partially makes use of artificial intelligence.

8) Empathic art is recognized by high technical and content skills and is not the result of extemporaneous sensitivity.

9) Empathic Art kindly asserts its vision but is also ready to take action to fight through denunciation.

10) Empathic art is not born only to console but to revolutionize.

11) Empathic art celebrates beauty and addresses one's own and others' pain.

Decalogue of Empathy
by Maria Rita Parsi

1. Empathy is that human, deep-rooted ability that allows those who possess and cultivate it to put themselves in the “shoes of others” to understand their emotions, feelings, needs, motivations, and intentions.

2. In this sense, the various fundamental forms of empathy must be considered. From spiritual empathy, which allows for a deep and transcendent connection with others, to emotional empathy, which allows us to connect with and feel what others are feeling, to cognitive empathy, which activates the ability to understand the emotions of others, to physical empathy, which allows us to connect with others through bodily experiences.

3. But to put yourself in someone else's shoes, you must first know yourself (in Ancient Greek, "γνῶθι σεαυτόν," "know thyself").

4. If a person knows themselves, in fact, they do not confuse the emotions, feelings, needs, desires, motivations, intentions, experiences, goals, and plans of others with their own.
Furthermore, they do not project their own aspirations onto others (family members, partners, children, friends, colleagues—and, even more so, onto managers, politicians, and government officials) in an attempt to achieve (and/or attempt to achieve) something that serves, first and foremost, to confirm their opinions, possibilities, and abilities.

5. But to know oneself in the "world of the virtual age," it is necessary to (in)form oneself to use all languages ​​for communication and social integration in an interdisciplinary manner, without privileging and pervading the virtual world, since the web is capable of conditioning the individual and collective imagination, causing internet addiction and other serious and disabling psychophysical disorders.

6. Therefore, the human sciences (anthropology, philosophy, pedagogy, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis) and the competent use of graphic art, painting, sculpture, theater, poetry, literature, music, dance, photography, cinema, and the web can contribute, in a decisive and profound way, to that Socratic self-knowledge.

7. At a neurobiological level, it is the "mirror neurons", a particular class of neurons, that promote the understanding of the mind and experiences of others, according to the theory formulated by the group of Rizzolatti and Gallese, according to which the basis of empathy would be a process of "embodied simulation", that is, a mechanism of an essentially motor nature, very ancient from the point of view of human evolution, characterised by neurons that act immediately before any more specifically cognitive processing.

8. According to Martin Hoffman's theory, empathy, as an affective dimension, has a more relevant role from the first days of life, while the cognitive dimension is almost absent. According to Hoffman (2008), in addition to the affective and cognitive components, a third factor is constituted by the "motivational" component.

9. Choi-Kain and Genderson (2008) have also studied empathy in depth, identifying three synthetic aspects of the various definitions and conceptions:
– an affective reaction, which involves sharing an emotional state with another;
– the cognitive capacity to imagine the perspective of others;
– an ability to stably maintain a self-other distinction.

10. For Salovey and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence is "the ability to monitor one's own and others' emotions, to differentiate them, and to use this information to guide one's thoughts and actions"; it encompasses those capacities of self-awareness and self-control, motivation, empathy, and ability to manage social relationships that any person can develop and which are fundamental for every human being.

Empathy has been indispensable in the therapeutic relationship since Freud (1921), who, however, did not consider it a therapeutic methodology. For Kohut, Mead, and Aaron Beck, empathy becomes an indispensable and effective tool for establishing an alliance with the patient that allows for trust in growth and change, despite the difficulties and suffering that could and/or may be encountered in experiencing and overcoming problems and pathologies. In this sense, Psychoanimation – Atecorcrea Therapy (creative therapeutic body animation) with cognitive, creative, corporeal mediation (Parsi 1976) – is a therapeutic, humanistic and transpersonal discipline that uses an interdisciplinary empathic approach to address, individually, in the family, at school, in society, issues and problems related to living together.