The Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown created a slew of emotional challenges for everyone, from toddlers to seniors. Now that our social skills have atrophied, how will be retrain ourselves to interact with each other again?
MIT Professor Sherry Turkle helps us understand how we might rejuvenate our senses and flex our empathy muscles once again. In her new memoir, The Empathy Diaries Turkle discusses her family, her upbringing and intellectual development to explain how these elements shaped her life’s work. Turkle explores a counterintuitive pattern observed across many decades devoted to keeping people connected: that empathy and connection can arrive when we feel the most alone and unfamiliar. So, there is hope in sight.
Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A licensed clinical psychologist, she is the author of six books and recipient of many awards including Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year.
Dr. Todd Essig is a psychoanalyst with a private practice in NYC. Known internationally for workshops on the possibilities and limitations of teletherapies, he is also Co-Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Covid-19 Response Team.
Recorded April 5, 2021
