Suicidal Empathy | Unreflective Syntony

Some thoughts on the concept

In my recent talk with Karen Mitchell we briefly discussed Gad Saad’s concept of suicidal empathy. Neither of us are big fans of the idea, for different but related reasons. For Karen, the notion shifts the blame from the predator onto their prey. I have additional problems with it, which I will elaborate below.

First, my attempt at a charitable summary. This “suicidal” species of empathy depends on the common definition of empathy, which is usually considered something like “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” It thus includes cognitive and emotional components: understanding where another person is coming from and resonantly experiencing their emotions. (Lobaczewski called the former “intuiting a psychological situation.”) Empathy is a normally adaptive trait most humans share, but it becomes destructive in certain situations, e.g., when it is excessive, misdirected, or applied without regard for reality or self-preservation.

Saad advocates for a golden-mean, or Goldilocks-type, moderation of empathy: not too little (the domain of psychopaths), nor too much (the domain of the suicidally empathic). When someone has too much empathy, and it misfires, individuals and societies come to prioritize the interests of outsiders, criminals, or harmful ideologies over their own survival. (Picture giving all your country’s wealth to the third-world, and starving to death in the process. Or putting foreigners in charge of your courts, police, military, and government.) In individual cases this can lead to personal tragedies, for example, consoling the migrant who then rapes or murders you. Or, on the group level, it can lead to “civilizational suicide.” Perhaps you are already familiar with this recent example, which went viral.

Forest_Mother@Forest_motherr

2:44 PM · Jun 29, 2026 · 1.27M Views

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While the commentary turns out to have been a conflation of two separate events (the public-masturbation incident took place in a different part of Italy around the same time), the photo certainly captured the zeitgeist.

While empathy in moderation is evolutionarily useful for social cooperation, too much can enable policies and attitudes that undermine our civilization, especially when empathy is decoupled from reason and consequences. This can manifest in the liberalization of criminal law, such that violent perpetrators are let off the hook; repeat offenders are given light sentences, or no sentences at all. Drug addicts are given needles and drugs, not treatment. Tolerance has no limits and cultural relativism reigns supreme.

Empathy thus becomes a kind of pathological overextension of its more natural, balanced form. However, those engaging in it do not realize this. They do not recognize that they have crossed the line into irrationality and pathology. Rather, they still consider themselves to be good and moral and will even harshly condemn anyone expressing criticism or not displaying similar levels of empathy, and they will do so fervently, with moral indignation. This phenomenon seems most prevalent among women, male feminists, and politicians.

This makes sense when keeping in mind the psychological findings on empathizing. Women score higher than men, on average, on various self-report scales, especially when it comes to the emotional component. They also have a slight advantage when it comes to reading non-verbal emotional displays and “reading the mind in the eyes.” (By contrast, men, overall, are higher on “systematizing.” Think trains.)

Additionally, I recently became familiar with this study from 2006: “Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others.” Its authors found that both men and women showed empathy-related activation of pain areas of the brain when watching fair players in an economic gain punished by an electric shock. However, when a cheater was shocked, women’s responses remained intact while men’s empathy was significantly reduced. In fact, the men showed increased activation of reward-related areas. They also self-reported a desire for revenge against the cheaters. In other words, men stopped empathizing with cheaters who deserved punishment and were satisfied seeing that punishment meted out. Women sympathized with the devil, so to speak.

That said, anyone familiar with the fairer sex knows that they can also be violently moralistic to an extent sometimes shocking even to male sensibilities. The sexes seem to differ, on average, when it comes to the form of punishments we dole out, the targets of those punishments, and the emotional pathways by which we arrive at that point. Men tend to be more direct and physical (a beating, a flogging, intervening or testifying even at personal risk or cost), women more relational and reputational (gossip, shaming, social pressure). Men will more readily punish abstract norm violations (e.g., cheating in the economic game above, violations of reciprocity and the formal rule of law, unearned merit, undermining of system integrity), while women are more sensitive to perceptible cues of vulnerability (e.g., infantile features, signals of distress, markers of weakness or inability to defend oneself, and signs of physical victimization).

While women may retain empathy for the perpetrator (especially if they perceive cues such as listed above), that can easily be overridden if presented with stronger cues from his vulnerable victim. This better explains the actions of the woman protecting the African man above. From her perspective, all she seems to have witnessed was a gang of Italians teaming up against an outnumbered African. (Which matches what little information is available about the case. Local Italian reports describe him responding to a provocation related to his swimsuit. The group is said to have punched him first, which may be the first punch which appears on video.)

That is my understanding of suicidal empathy as it is usually framed. Now, here are my problems with it. First, there is the term itself. It makes perfect sense in context of the common understanding of empathy, both generally and specifically in its current usage in psychology. But modern psychology is profoundly unilevel, to borrow Kazimierz Dabrowski’s criticism and terminology. That is, “empathy” as it is commonly understood is too one-size-fits-all and too continuum-based as a concept. Psychological reality is flattened to the lowest-common-denominator expression of the trait. Some have too little, others too much, and the rest just enough, more or less.

For Dabrowski—who had actual psychological insight, something lacking among many contemporary psychologists—empathy is a multilevel phenomenon. There are multiple qualitatively different expressions of it which correlate with the overall psychological development of the individual. Among psychopaths, empathy is notable by its absence, an atrophy of both its emotional and cognitive components. Moral callousness. When it is actually present in its lowest form, which Dabrowski calls syntony, it is automatic, undifferentiated, and unreflective. If you see someone suffering, you suffer a little too. It doesn’t matter the reason for that suffering, whether it is deserved or not, and there is no great cognitive component of understanding or deep reflection on the person or the nature of the shared feeling.

Sympathy, before the advent of Hallmark cards, used to mean precisely this: a shared or corresponding affective state, common feeling, being affected together with another. Empathy, by contrast, was coined to capture something somewhat different: actively feeling oneself into something or someone, i.e., an act of imaginative projection. Empathy added a cognitive element: active reflection, not automatic and unthinking emotional sympathy.

Dabrowski defined empathy as “reflective syntony.” For him, it only enters into the psychology of those capable of multilevel disintegration or inner conflict: the division within oneself into, the recognition of, and the active choice between aspects of the self that do and do not align with who we want to be. Here’s a more or less randomly chosen description of such inner conflict from Dabrowski’s Multilevelness of Emotional and Instinctive Functions:

The position presented here is that a multilevel emotional conflict, or multilevel emotional-cognitive conflict is the sine qua non condition of development. Let us take, for example, the forms of overexcitability. Strong emotional and strong intellectual overexcitability lead to a powerful conflict between a personal, feeling and relationship-oriented intuitive approach to life and a probing, analytical, and logical approach. Inevitably the two will clash many times in the course of development before a resolution of the conflict is achieved. If strong imaginational overexcitability comes into play the conflict may spread even further. When sensual overexcitability enters the picture there arise conflicts between pleasure-orientation which even in its refined esthetic form touches only the surface of experience, and the more rigorous and profound demands of empathy, self-denial, moral principle and need for self-perfection. There may be a violent and enduring conflict between lower level needs of comfort and sensual satisfaction and the higher needs of reflection, solitude and attenuation of sensual desires which are now regarded as interference.

Here’s how he characterized the different expressions of syntony, identification, and empathy:

Temperamental syntony [Level I—Primary integration, i.e., lack of inner conflict]. Superficial, easy, and immediately expressed feeling of commonality with others. Group feelings of doing things together, such as athletics, dances, drinking, brawls, or union strikes and wars. Temperamental syntony is governed by the mood of the moment and absence of conflict of interest. When such conflict appears feelings of kinship are replaced by aggression.

That is more or less the common understanding of “empathy,” because that is all that a majority of the population experience day to day.

Temperamental syntony [Level II—Unilevel disintegration, i.e., inner conflict without hierarchical structure]. Fluctuation of syntonic and asyntonic moods (mood cyclicity) with easy transition from mood of companionship to withdrawal. Sensitivity combined with irritability—a person is offended easily, is touchy. Enthusiasm and feelings of friendship may arise very quickly and may equally quickly vanish as a result of minor disappointments. … External conditions and influences dominate in the fluctuations of syntony.

Identification [Level II]. Identification differs from syntony in that it is directed toward another person while syntony is directed both toward individuals and groups. Syntony is less differentiated than identification. Identification at this level is initial, variable and partial. ‘Partial’ means that it does not impart the intuitive knowledge of another person as given by high empathy, rather, it is an identification with one’s image of another person, while the image is not checked with the psychological and emotional reality of the other. There is also disidentification—variable states of opposition to attitudes expressed by others that on occasion, or only apparently, differ from one’s own. Identification is more lasting than syntony, sometimes can be obsessive.

The controlling factors in identification are more psychological and more internal than in syntony. There is a great deal of suggestibility in identification with others but also periodical rigidity. In the extreme case identification with another person may be excessive to the point of losing one’s identity. This occurs not only in schizophrenia and psychosis but also in an undifferentiated, and not uncommon, conception of love.

Here we find what might be described as “too much” empathy, or even “suicidal empathy”: primitive identification with another based on one’s projected image of them, which may or may not bear any actual resemblance to the person in question. There’s just one problem: empathy hasn’t yet entered the picture.

Identification [Level III—Multilevel disintegration]. Growth of understanding and of feeling for others arises out of personal emotional experience and out of the development of a hierarchy of values in oneself. While syntony as a global, undifferentiated feeling toward others disappears, multilevel identification is more selective than on level II, and at the same time it is more personal, that is, directed more toward a deeper relationship. … There is also disidentification arising from the deeply felt aversive reactions to models of lower levels.

Empathy [Level III]. Syntony is transformed into empathy through growing identification with higher levels in oneself. Syntonic feelings toward others are based on reflection, self-evaluation, clear hierarchization of values, and growing readiness to bring help to others. Growing understanding of others is based on genuine acceptance of others as unique persons. There is an ability to differentiate subjective individualities. But there is also a distinct dissyntony with lower levels in oneself and in others. Nevertheless, lower emotional attitudes, though negated, are not condemned.

In Dabrowski’s conception, empathy is not simply a basic trait, which people can have “too much” or “too little” of. Rather, it is an inner “dynamism” which facilitates development and is itself refined with development, becoming more accurate in the process, more appropriate to the situation at hand. Just as one becomes more aware of the higher and lower in oneself, this is reflected in one’s understanding of others. An empathic person would thus see a public masturbator, for example, for what he is: a morally and psychologically primitive individual who should be removed from the public. He would experience disidentification and dissyntony as well as empathy for the offender (whom he understands to be functioning on a primitive, instinctive level). He might even intervene physically to protect others, including children, in his vicinity. This would also be out of empathy—for those bystanders unfortunate enough to witness such a display.

So, I would argue that “suicidal empathy” is, first of all, not empathy. It is unreflective syntony. (A nitpick, I admit.) Second, it is not a result of “too much” empathy. It is a lower, primitive form of it. And above all, it is in fact a para-appropriate (or maladaptive) response. This is what Saad gets right, even if he misses the most important point regarding it (I’ll come back to this one). Para-appropriate responses are normal human reactions that are ordinarily adaptive but which become maladaptive in situations for which they were not designed, particularly, when they are evoked by human predators instead of normal humans.

Ted Bundy famously evoked feelings of sympathy from his female victims by pretending to be injured. In any other situation, expressing concern and offering a helping hand would be appropriate and not dangerous. It only becomes dangerous when this response is manipulated and exploited. The stimulus is being faked. This is actually further support for my argument that suicidal empathy is not an expression of “too much” empathy. Even those with below-average empathy can be manipulated in this way. It doesn’t take much—just the minimal amount necessary to prompt a driver to stop on the side of the road to help another driver stranded with a flat tire, or even less than that in more casual circumstances. The problem isn’t how much empathy—it is how that empathy is evoked.

Similarly, recall what Dabrowski wrote about Level II identification: “it does not impart the intuitive knowledge of another person as given by high empathy, rather, it is an identification with one’s image of another person, while the image is not checked with the psychological and emotional reality of the other.” The suicidally empathic, in my experience, are usually sympathizing with the image of a person, not the actual person, and that image is not checked against any psychological or emotional reality. In the case of the criminal migrant, it is with the “poor, helpless minority,” not the psychologically primitive and violently criminal individual.

By Dabrowski’s definition, it is impossible to empathize with a psychopath in the manner implied by the examples of suicidal empathy. Most such “empathizing” is simply identification with a projection that does not in fact exist, often a fake persona crafted by the psychopath (whether expertly done or not). One can sympathize with a psychopath’s persona just as easily as one can sympathize with an actor playing a dramatic role. (An empathic person knows they’re acting, however, and doesn’t take their performance as necessarily reflecting their psychological and emotional reality.) To truly empathize with a psychopath would be to feel into them and encounter…a moral-emotional void populated by the basest instincts and the most selfish and self-aggrandizing motives. Such an experience would horrify most people.

The point Saad misses is this: where there is smoke, there is fire, and where there is an epidemic of para-appropriate responses, there is someone deliberately eliciting those responses. This is why his emphasis on the subject—despite its insights—gives the impression of blaming the victim. There wouldn’t be so many examples if there weren’t a pathological source for them. And this source can be found in two places: the predatory migrants themselves (the rapists, murderers, cheaters, and con artists), and the western elites who actively portray them as the victims for their own purposes. These elites can be found in government, media, think tanks, universities.

And this hints at an even deeper reason for why I dislike the term. Sometimes (how often, I can’t be sure), what gets labeled as suicidal empathy is actually its opposite: something like sadistic resonance. Karen Mitchell covered this in our discussion as well. Some of those “suicidally empathic” judges and citizens running cover for murderers and rapists are actually psychopaths themselves—pathocrats whether in reality or potential. They make a mockery of our laws because for them, those laws go against their very nature. They actually want to live in a world where those of their kind are free to rape and murder. They want to destroy our norms, our laws, and the people for whom those things seem natural and right. One of the ways they are going about doing that is by hijacking the natural syntonic responses of westerners and making them feel that it is their moral duty to take in, accept, and defend infinite foreign predators. That in itself is a paramoralism—another red flag for the action of pathocrats.

Unfortunately, this applies to all such “normies,” even the men in the study above whose empathy gets turned off for cheaters and who enjoy seeing them punished. Like syntony, this moralizing feeling is designed for ordinary life with other more or less normal people. It is how we keep each other in line and enforce social rules and norms. We don’t punish just for the sake of it. If we did, we would gain equal satisfaction with every punished infraction. We might even encourage it in order to get the satisfaction that punishment brings. Instead, we tend to become increasingly exasperated at repeat offenses. That’s because we expect that punishment to have an effect. We expect the cheater to stop cheating. There’s only one problem. Punishment of this sort only works on normal people. Psychopaths, by contrast, show pronounced deficits in passive avoidance learning. They don’t learn to avoid behaviors that elicit unpleasant punishments. (While moralistically unsatisfying, they do respond to positive reinforcement, or reward-based approaches to behavioral modification.)

Humanity in its current incarnation has yet to solve this problem. In the past it was simple enough: the offender would be exiled or have an unfortunate “hunting accident.” The only real option employed today is long prison terms, and even that is ceasing to be an option thanks to delusional and sadistic judges. Certainly, the last thing we need is to import more of them from foreign countries. We have enough problems with our own.

The reason I have been thinking on this subject is an exchange I read on X which started with a post by Bishop Robert Barron followed by a response by Jordan Peterson which I thought was ridiculous. Bishop Barron liked Saad’s book on the subject (which, full disclosure, I have not read). Of note, he wrote [with my comments in brackets]:

As I was making my way through Saad’s book, I kept remarking the sharp distinction between empathy and love. [I’m not sure it is so sharp, as we’ll see below.]

To empathize is to enter profoundly into the experience of another and to endeavor not to hurt that person’s feelings. [I’m not so sure about that last bit, but I’ll let it slide.] But to love is, as Thomas Aquinas taught, “to will the good of the other.”

As I said, in itself and all things being equal, empathy is a good thing. But it is not the same as love, which, depending on circumstances, can very much involve hurting someone’s feelings.

When a professor gives a student a “C” as an honest reflection of his work, he might well be insulting him, but he’s also telling him the truth and perhaps even urging him to try harder.

When, in the Confessional, a priest tells a murderer to turn himself in to the police, he’s undoubtedly making that person’s life more uncomfortable, but he’s also willing the man’s good.

Any decent parent knows that showing real love for her children means engendering all kinds of bad feelings in them. [Good examples, but they all depend on an empathic understanding of the other and their developmental level.]

In light of this distinction, we can understand why Jesus didn’t say, “have empathy for one another,” but rather “love one another.” And why St. John the Evangelist didn’t say, “God is empathy,” but rather “God is love.” [Probably a better reason the Bible does not use the word is that it wasn’t invented, with its modern definition, until in 1909. Though it does use such words as splanchnizomai (strong emotional compassion that moves one to action), sympatheō (feeling/suffering with), eleos (compassionate action toward those in need), and oiktirmos (compassionate concern). They are love’s fruits.]

Peterson replied with something of a non sequitur, asserting that “Suicidal empathy was literally the sin of Judas.” I was under the impression it was betrayal! Eyebrows raised, I read on. It turns out, Peterson is referring to the Anointing at Bethany. He writes:

Think of what that money could have done for the poor, says the man who turns Christ over to the Roman authorities, and later hung himself in despair.

He makes the statement when Lazarus’s sister Mary annoints [sic] the feet of Jesus with a costly perfume.

The wisdom in making a misapplied, deceitful and narcissistic empathic altruism the sin of the betrayer of Christ Himself is breathtaking.

First of all, if this was Judas’s sin, it was also the rest of the disciples’, as the Gospels variously claim that it was “the disciples” (plural, collective) who were indignant at the apparent waste (as in Matthew), or just “some who were there” (as in Mark). Only in John is the sole objector named as Judas. And yet, if Peterson had read the very next verse, he would have found this: “He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions.” In other words, the only similarity between Judas’s sin here and the type of suicidal empathy Peterson is citing is a verbal display of “empathic altruism.”

As I wrote on X, we already have perfectly usable concepts to describe this sin: lying, hypocrisy, even the more recent “virtue signaling.” Judas’s psychology is portrayed as fraudulent and corrupt, with no solid self, no consistent or authentic hierarchy of values. His criticism is shallow and inauthentic. We have all met more than a few Judases in our lives, and describing them genuinely empathic in any way (even “suicidally” so) is ridiculous. If there is any actual depth to his stated concern for the poor, it is fleeting and skin deep, a momentary flash of pseudo-virtue dissipated as soon as it was uttered. John implies it was an outright lie.

In order for the parallel to work, Judas would have been killed by the very poor he attempted to help out of a misguided and overextended (“too much”) empathy. That is, his empathy would have turned out to have been self-defeating. And that is not how the story ends. (Nor was it the intention of the Gospel writers, and I think quite obviously so.) Christ, on the other hand, displays a high degree of empathy. He even does so for the poor. “I was hungry … thirsty … a stranger … naked … sick … in prison … Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:31–46). If anything, Judas’s hypocrisy condemns him for lacking any such genuine empathy. “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” (1 John 3:17).

To put Dabrowski in dialogue with Bishop Barron and Jordan Peterson, here are his descriptions of the two highest levels of empathy. I have added some comments and biblical quotations that demonstrate, I believe, that Dabrowski’s understanding of the meaning of Christianity:

Identification [Level IV—Organized (directed) multilevel disintegration]. Strong and full identification with oneself as to the essence of the high levels of one’s psychic structure. Strong disidentification with the lower levels of one’s personality structure. Identification with others is replaced by empathy. There is full empathy toward others, but never full toward oneself, while identification with oneself is total, but never total with others.

• “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)

• “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Galatians 5:24)

• “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

• “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” (John 13:34)

• “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

• “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3)

Empathy [Level IV]. Differentiation of empathy proceeds as a function of the process subject-object in oneself [i.e., looking at oneself as if from outside, with self-evaluation, thus giving insight into others]. There is more discretion in respect to others but without diminishing profound sympathy, understanding, or readiness for sacrifice. There is growth of love and concern for those who suffer injustice and are oppressed. … Empathy and self-control are mutually balanced. Empathy tends toward universal love but does not quite achieve it at this level.

• “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5)

• “Neither do I condemn you … Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:1–11)

• “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor… to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” (Luke 4:18)

• “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22–23)

• “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good…” (Matthew 5:44–45)

Responsibility [Level IV-V—The borderline of organized multilevel disintegration and secondary integration]. … The sources of responsibility are: the highest level of empathy and love for every human being and the need to turn this love into action. Christ’s life was the acme of responsibility for all those who suffered injustice. He expressed this at all times—“come ye all to me”—with not merely a hope but certitude of obtaining life in the kingdom which is not of this world: “Dwell in me as I in you,” “I am the way, I am the truth, and I am life; no one comes to the Father except by me.”

Empathy [Level IV-V]. Empathy achieves its highest expression in the readiness to sacrifice one’s life for the sake of others. [Ironically, the closest conceptual match for “suicidal” (i.e., self-sacrificial) empathy!] Empathy develops not only toward the people one is responsible for but also toward one’s highest strivings, one’s own unrepeatability harmonized with a total respect for “Thou” which exceeds the respect for oneself. The highest level of an authentic “I” in relationship with an authentic “Thou.” We encounter here the development of empathy for everything that exists, especially all living creatures. There is a profound and active empathy toward all those who are hurt and humiliated. Love is emanated equally strongly in the contemplative states of meditation as in conditions of everyday life. … Moral differentiation of others is based on the deepest empathy toward them. This empathic differentiation occurs through intuitive-synthetic insights, obtained frequently during meditation and contemplation.

• “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

• “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who … emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant … he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death.” (Philippians 2:5–8)

• “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:14–15)

• “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.” (Luke 12:6)

• “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24)

• “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 5:30)

So no, we do not need less empathy. We need more empathy, better empathy. Conscious, reflective, differentiated. We need discernment. We need to come to a clear understanding of the problems facing us. We need right judgment of those who are attempting to destroy whatever good still exists in our communities and nations.