My reading is that Kathleen, as Chuck, lack some empathy. (...)
Don't expect true friendship and love to come out of it.
So i was wondering to what extend empathy is a necessary precondition for friendship and love and how this would relate to Kathleens sadism.
Although there seem to be a
general understanding on the concept of empathy, it is actually a rather amorphous and ill-defined trait. Apparently there are like 43 different definitions and classifications in current psychological scientific literature about this.
Without going into greater detail there seems to be a common trend to differentiate at least between the concepts of
functional or
cognitive empathy and
emotional or
authentic empathy.
The first one entails the ability to conclude from external signs and non-verbal communication of our counterpart onto their internal emotional state. It looks like e.g. people on the autism spectrum especially struggle with this kind, and therefore get attributed with a lack of empathy. Autists need to decode "They make a 'sad' face, this means they feel sadness; they are laughing, therefore they are probably happy." it doesn't come "naturally" to them. This kind of empathy is trainable, and there are management courses which are focused on that, to boost for instance success with sales and HR management.
The second one is about being able to mirror our counterparts feelings and to invoke compassion for them (although there are definitions which seperate compassion from empathy). Now this seems to be rooted a bit deeper in our brains, located primarily in the limbic system. A part of that seems to be evolutionary hard-coded, while another part seems to be malleable to a certain degree. Which means tinkering with emotional empathy is considerably harder, but not impossible. Two examples would be telling toddlers that they hurt others, if they hit their peers in the sandbox, which normally leads them to stop this behaviour; and training child-soldiers to be insensitive towards their victims by repeatedly ordering them to conduct atrocities.
So in this setting i would like to view sadism rather as a medical condition than a mere kink.
Since no human can survive alone, Empathy is an important evolutionary trait which enables humans to operate appropriatly in their social surroundings. Grieving for a beloved lost one with your family is important to strengthen your mutual bonds, enjoying similar activities is often needed to establish new ones. Whereas poisoning the tribes water-supply, because one of them strives for the suffering of others is highly detrimental to the overall survivability.
Now Kathleens problem, and more generally the problem of sadism is, that it connects the "wrong", the "inappropriate" emotions. Reportedly Kat tore off the heads of her sisters dolls as a child, i doubt she would have done this, if she had not gained any positive feelings from that. So instead of appropriatly mirroring her sisters sadness, anger and frustration, she probably felt joy and accomplishment. Also Kathleen told Edwin, that she lost friends because she was unable to show the expected feelings towards them. Which is understandable, because most people would be creeped out by a friend laughing with visible delight at you, if you fell and scratched your knee bloody.
That doesn't mean Kathleen didn't want to have friends and this also doesn't mean that she is unable to interpret her counterparts feelings and feel something herself. It just does mean that her condition triggers the "wrong" emotional response. Kathleen has empathy, else her sadism would be pointless, since she would not be able to gain any emotion from someone else, but her emotional empathy connects to a false response.
Kathleen had to learn the hard way, if she wants to be her true self, she is unable to fit in society, therefore she trained her functional empathy to a point where she is able to express the "appropriate" emotional response in a given social situation.
However this puts a high amount of pressure and stress on her and she longs for a place where she can let loose, with the Carnation Club being that; in a way it is her sanctum, where she can be at peace with herself.
With that said, Kathleen is not impaired in having emotions at all, we have seen examples of anger, frustration, joy, amusement, boredom and placidity. I dare to say she is indeed capable of loving someone else, but keep in mind that love can be one-sided and unrequited, and her condition puts serious constraints on any "conventional" or "traditional" relationship. For instance i get the feeling that she really loved her sister, in her own way. Because making someone suffer, who is emotionally close to her should trigger a far bigger response than doing that to a random stranger, like we usually get way more affected if something bad happens to our family than the same thing happening to some people in e.g. africa.
I don't know what exactly
RC-1138 Boss deems to be "true" friendship and love, and looking into those constructs would be easily another essay of at least this length, but if they mean "conventional" or "traditional" they are probably right.
However if we base love and friendship on terms like appreciation for each other, considering the wants and needs of each other and the desire to spent time with each other, there are possible pathways those two, Edwin and Kathleen, could take.
On a personal note: i view sadism as a highly antisocial and dangerous paraphilia, actually surpassed by only a few others like e.g. pedophilia (the real one with prepubescent children). There is a reason evolution has led mankind on a path where sadism is not very prevalent and should be considered an aberration. While this kink may have its merit as an erotic fantasy, i do believe it should be never acted out.