The Empathy Exams

Throughout The Empathy Exams, Jamison provides a wide range of examples of people experiencing pain and trauma, often including herself. This includes the emotional trauma of her own abortion (“The Empathy Exams”), the self-inflicted pain of ultrarunners (“The Immortal Horizon”), and the physical agony experienced by artist Frida Kahlo following an accident in her youth (“Pain Tours [II]”). Throughout each of her explorations of pain Jamison maintains the idea that each trauma is unique to the person experiencing it and therefore must be treated with care, respect, and empathy.

When Jamison first introduces the idea of individual traumas, she is discussing her abortion. She highlights that the man who administered hers also “gave twenty other women their abortions” (16). In saying this she establishes a sense of community. She becomes one of nearly two dozen other women getting the same procedure and receiving the same pain medication afterward. Jamison struggles to process the feelings related to her procedure. She displays confidence while inwardly she battles her feelings, as exemplified when she writes, “The nurse will eventually ask, how do you feel about getting the procedure? Tell her you feel sad but you know it’s the right choice, because this seems like the right thing to say, even though it’s a lie” (25). It isn’t until later in the collection that Jamison has accepted the uniqueness of her own experience, commenting that “[i]t’s news whenever a girl has an abortion because her abortion has never been had before and won’t ever be had again. I’m saying this as someone who’s had an abortion but hasn’t had anyone else’s” (217). Jamison validates her own experience, acknowledging she is allowed to feel however she needs to feel. There is not an expectation of stoicism nor is there a need for repression. Jamison uses her own life as an example of individuality in the face of widely experienced trauma. By providing the reader with deep insight into her psyche and procedure, Jamison invites others who have survived similar things to reclaim the uniqueness of their stories. Jamison leads by experience, asserting there is nothing cliché about what she has been through.

Jamison showcases the uniqueness of trauma in another way by tracing the life of Charlie Engle. The reader is first introduced to Charlie in “The Immortal Horizon,” where he is one of the competitors of the Barkley Marathons. He is described as a “strong virgin” who has “been sober for nearly twenty years, and his recovery has been described as a switch from one addiction to another” (96). Charlie uses the adrenaline from running to fend off the adrenaline from past drug use. In an eerie moment of foreshadowing, Laz asks Charlie “whether Charlie enjoyed the prison section” of the race, which the runner claims to have enjoyed (105). This freedom of movement is crushed later when Charlie is convicted of mortgage fraud and sent to prison in “Fog Count,” where he and Jamison eventually meet again. In prison, Charlie becomes one of many, his movement restricted. Jamison notes that the prison “clutches men close—tallies them up, keeps them contained, seals them off” (138). Charlie’s story is one of many, the experience of a man incarcerated, but through Jamison the reader experiences the uniqueness of his situation. He is once again made individual for the duration of the essay, only to be once again swallowed up by the system when Jamison and he part ways at the end of their visit. Jamison reflects on the nature of this, of the potency of people who have stories and those who need to listen. This in addition to Jamison’s own experience with her abortion are representative of the potency of individual trauma even in the face of pain shared by a wide group of people. Each story matters because each person matters, and their trauma must be treated as unique because of it.