I am a clinical psychologist and did research related to empathy and compassion. Often in clinical work I have seen almost the exact opposite distinction betwe

I am a clinical psychologist and did research related to empathy and compassion. Often in clinical work I have seen almost the exact opposite distinction between empathy and sympathy with empathy being understanding and sympathy being shared feeling. In the research, definitions are muddy and one of the main problems with empathy research (IMO) is that each research group seems to use their own definition and these definitions are often incompatible. My own preferred definition defines cognitive and affective empathy, with cognitive being the understanding and affective being sharing in the emotion. I personally don’t care for the way the article defines these things. It seems to contrast sharply with more or less all scientific and clinical uses of the terms AND the everyday use of sympathy which does NOT commonly mean understanding but usually something like pity or just “feeling for”. It almost seems like the author accidentally switched empathy and sympathy throughout the article.