"When does empathy actually reinforce the pain it was meant to console?" Jamison frequently asks this sort of subtle and intelligent question in this collection of nuanced essays on how we respond to the suffering of others.
She reflects on her time as a medical actress pretending to be sick for trainee doctors and attends a conference for those with "Morgellons", a diffuse disease not recognised by the medical profession. A confessional essayist, but never a bore, she's attentive to how egotistical empathy can be: "we like who we become in response to injustice," she writes, after viewing a documentary on a multiple homicide. Jamison occasionally stays in too much with the books and her writing is best when she journeys out, especially when she assumes the posture of the tourist. On one such occasion she joins a surreal Gang Tour of Los Angeles and looks on as her fellow visitors take "gang shots" of one another for their Facebook profiles.
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