Paul Bloom’s “The Perils of Empathy” says it makes us biased, tribal and often cruel, implying literary fiction, which promotes empathy, is bad for you.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at Yale University, is promoting his new book, Against Empathy, with an article about “the empathy trap”: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-perils-of-empathy-1480689513

He doesn’t mention literary fiction—which other psychologists praise as enhancing empathy in its readers—but I guess he would consider novels to be a public menace.

I, myself, am not against literary fiction, as indicated in a recent post:

November 12, 2016

Literary Fiction promotes Empathic Attunement: Emotional Empathy (I’m happy or sad if you are) and Cognitive, Hypnotic Empathy (It’s true if you say so).

Studies say that reading literary fiction promotes empathy.

Empathy is usually subdivided into two kinds, emotional and cognitive. An empathic person is able to get in tune with another person’s emotions or thoughts.

My idea of prototypical emotional attunement is a mother’s love of her child: I’m happy (or sad) if you are. My idea of prototypical cognitive attunement is the attitude of a hypnotic subject toward the hypnotist: It’s true if you say so.

The distinction between emotion and cognition is not always clear. Freud is said to have abandoned the use of hypnosis when a patient he had hypnotized suddenly threw her arms around his neck, leading him to conclude that there was no essential difference between love and hypnosis.

If literary fiction promotes empathy, and empathy is related to hypnosis, what is the connection between literary fiction and hypnosis?

Authors of literary fiction are often in a trance when they write it. And readers of literary fiction are often in a trance when they read it.

All of which is normal, necessary, and enjoyable.