„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

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KENEPATHY
Michele Stimac
The importance of understanding feelings and emotions in the communication process
or in a helping relationship has been stressed so often that there is no question but that
affect is as important as cognitive data for human expression and understanding. Human
relations trainers have stressed the importance of “catching feelings” (empathy) and
have emphasized the importance of discerning feelings in order to understand an
individual’s inner being. But training manuals filled with structured activities too often
concentrate on affective understanding to the exclusion of cognitive understanding. This
concentration on the affective dimension has created an imbalance in our skill training
as egregious as the previous concentration on cognitive communication. Human beings
function continually at several levels, and true understanding requires listening to them
at all levels.
Individuals trained to listen to others must “kenepathize,” that is, hear the verbal
message, see the nonverbal behavior, and grasp what the speaker’s thoughts and
perceptions are as well as what that person is feeling and experiencing at the moment.
The term “kenepathy” supplements the term “empathy.” We have come to associate
empathy almost exclusively with “catching feelings” or understanding affect, so the
term kenepathy has been coined to convey a more all-inclusive understanding. The
prefix ken, borrowed from the archaic Scottish word meaning to know or to understand,
has been joined to the root pathy from the Greek “pathos” or feelings. Kenepathy, as
defined here, means to understand cognitive as well as affective data—to grasp
another’s thoughts, perceptions, and feelings.
The “bucket” model developed here is useful in human relations or leadership
training to convey the complexity of the human being and the need for a confluent grasp
of feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and actions.
THE BUCKET MODEL
Human beings are so complex that their behavior is not easy to understand, a fact that
Lewin (1951) attempted to explain with his concept of “life space.” According to Lewin,
behavior is a function of each person’s life space; to understand it requires that we
understand the dynamics in that person’s space—a challenge that even the most
proficient listener finds difficult to meet. The bucket model illustrates the complexity of
Originally published in The 1981 Annual Handbook for Group Facilitators by John E. Jones and J. William Pfeiffer (Eds.), San Diego,
CA: Pfeiffer & Company.
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright © 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer ❚❘ 37