A review by shirleytupperfreeman
The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison

This is a book of essays - most of which touch on the topic of empathy in some way. I really appreciated some of the essays and I found a couple of them hard going. The author has had a variety of experiences in which to give and receive empathy. It was interesting to read about her experiences as an actor-patient for medical students practicing empathy, visiting a man in prison who appears to be wrongfully accused, supporting her brother in a seriously extreme sport. Her own illnesses and medical situations are also fodder for analysis. Her thoughtful conclusions are often painfully won - it would be hard to be her mother. I especially liked this paragraph from the first essay - "Empathy isn't just something that happens to us -- a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain -- it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves.....To say 'going through the motions' - this isn't reduction so much as acknowledgement of effort -- the labor, the motions, the dance -- of getting inside another person's state of heart or mind." Nicely said, Leslie Jamison.