Dr. Bruce Perry, senior leader of The ChildTrauma Academy, a not-for-profit organization in Houston, Texas, and professor of Behavioral Sciences at the Northwestern School of Medicine in Chicago, spoke in the Diane Heller auditorium on April 19 about the lack of empathy in American society.

Perry is a psychiatrist who visited Parker as the recipient of the Francine Rosenberg Memorial award, which is given annually by a committee of Parker administrators to an individual who shares “innovative views, philosophies, and teachings relevant to the education of our children,” the lecture program said. The series, named in memory of the loved and appreciated community member, Francine C. Rosenberg, has been in existence for 18 years, and aims to impact Parker in a purposeful way, much as Rosenberg did.

In his lecture, Perry unpacked the disappearance of empathy in society. Specifically, Perry focused on how, from birth, infants who aren’t cared for well will lack empathy for the rest of their lives solely because the were neglected as children. He also attributes it to the rise in technology use, and thus a decreased amount of face to face relations amongst peers.

Nearly the whole lower level of the auditorium was filled on the night of April 19, with some even trickling into the balcony above. Mostly adults were in attendance, with a few student-aged children sprinkled throughout.  

Perry, a slender man with pushed-back white hair, stood tall at the podium in the Heller Auditorium with a PowerPoint displaying behind him and on all screens around the venue.

He opened with, and centered the majority of his lecture around, babies and the idea that the first empathetic relations a baby has with adults shape how the baby reacts in times to come, and that this in turn will shape how the baby connects with others later in life.

Perry said, “Being able to tolerate trauma is completely related to your ability to connect to other people.” Those children who lack early connections, “start behind and stay behind” those children who have had increased relations with adults, according to Perry.

“I was really taken back by Perry’s part about the first empathetic connections babies have,” said Margaret Rose, who paid a visit to Parker to hear Perry speak.  “Us as humans really have to pay more attention to how we treat infants just simply to insure that they turn out well,”

Perry also touched on ADHD in teens. He condemned the diagnosis of ADHD. Perry said, “ADHD at a young age is simply just stating that a child is undeveloped based on their earlier years.”

“Perry’s tangent about ADHD really got me thinking about the diagnoses of teens and how overactive we and society are regarding ADHD,” said sophomore Alex Chapman.   

With a host of stories, Perry got the crowd laughing at multiple points throughout the lecture, interweaving anecdotes that addressed fallacies.

One specific falsehood that Perry touched on was the idea that if a baby breaks out into a howling cry, parents should ignore them in hope that they will somehow work things out within their own mind.

“The Germans used to keep babies in the dark and not respond to them when they cried,” Perry said. “This created a lack of empathy amongst the children as they grew up.”

Human beings in the present day have a preconceived notion that independence is inherently a good thing, Perry said. “Independence is a fallacy,” he said. “Human beings can never be considered biologically independent.”

Perry instead values close-knit relationships, which, he said, foster empathy. Perry specifically touched on the fact that family sizes are extremely low compared to those of hundreds of years ago when he believes empathy was at its highest. Infants at that time had easier access to numerous amounts of interactions per day whereas now, the average infant is left with very few useful interactions, and it is because of this, along with other reasons, that Perry attributes the disappearance of empathy in society.  

Perry hopes to educate society and so bring it back to a time when human interactions were more frequent, and empathy reigned. “We are in a position to actively change the trajectory of our species,” Perry said, “now whether that be for the good or for the bad is solely up to us.”