Roots and Collapse of Empathy -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- List of figures -- Introduction and overview -- Overview of the book's contents in terms of questions for the various chapters -- I. Infant roots of empathy and mutual infant-adult attunement -- 1. Empathic participation: When infants feed others and participate in their movements -- Empathic mimicry in an audience exposed to a video of an imitating newborn -- Some cross-cultural snapshots of infants feeding their care-givers -- Studies of children's (pro)social interaction on four continents -- When wartime children are altruistic towards one another -- Empathic reaction to crying? -- When children come to the aid of children and adults -- From altercentricity to altruism - what is the link? -- On the partial neurosocial support and memory involved in participant learning -- 2. Infant and adult in interpersonal communion and upon perturbation -- When protoconversation was first revealed by film analyses -- Born with the virtual other in mind -- Even a prematurely born can engage the parent weeks before normal term -- Mutual immediacy of feelings in infant-adult dyads -- Perturbation in double video experiments -- Comments on and confirmation of the virtual other mechanism -- On attachment and modes of reunion in "strange situations" -- Fear of strangers and "alien" others nurtured by we-feelings -- On long-term consequences of perturbed mother-infant communication -- 3. Empathic distress, moral development and dilemma-processing -- Intersubjective layers operative in social interactions throughout life -- Modes of arousal of empathic distress according to Hoffman -- Hoffman's account of five stages in the development of empathic distress -- Shared pain-processing system pertaining to empathy.

On studies of moral development in terms of principles and moral sentiments -- Affective-cognitive inconsistency in paired students processing a moral dilemma -- The Prisoners' Dilemma is no dilemma when altruistic feelings are at play -- Five types of moral encounters or dilemmas according to Hoffman -- II. Empathy, dialogue, and their blockage -- 4. Empathy and its neurosocial support -- Terminology and categories of feelings: Empathy and vitality affects -- On imitation by newborns and participant mirroring by the spectators -- When toddlers are watching failing adults: Some experimental studies -- Returning to the question of neurobiological support: Mirror neurons -- Appendix -- 5. Children hurting and comforting, and being victims of abuse and net-bullying -- Some reports on children's anti-social, hostile and aggressive behaviour -- Cross-cultural studies of children's (pro)social interaction -- Mixed feelings and alternation -- Collapse of empathic distress -- Victims of neglect, abuse and humiliation in childhood and adolescence -- Circular re-enactment of care giving and of abuse -- Childhood sentiments and possible paths of recovery -- Can dialogue unfold itself in psychotherapy? -- The multiple voices of the minds of some childhood abuse victims -- On the emergence of the Internet society and social media -- Internet media serving terrorism -- 6. When nature prevents empathy, while opening for special talents -- On early misattribution of cause: "The refrigerator mother" -- The challenge of being asked "Do as I do!" in a face-to-face situation -- Impairments in autism compared to layers in typical development -- Returning to the topic of special talents in the autistic spectrum -- 7. When dialogue breaks down -- Group pressure and obedience: Adopting the view of the majority -- Submitting to a monolithic perspective.

The idea and ideal of dialogue -- Returning to the cases of Leibniz and of Anna Freud -- How is it that one sometimes submit to a model monopoly? -- Modes of resolution and opening for dialogue between rival perspectives -- III. From genocide and terrorism to rescue and altruism -- 8. How can ordinary persons become agents of torture and extermination? -- Collapse of empathy in Milgram's "electric chair" experiments -- Totalitarian logics: 'Let there be a world free of evil!' -- The torturer's mind: Nazi war criminals -- Reserve Police Battalion 101 contributing to the "Final Solution" in Poland -- From healers to killers: The Auschwitz Self of the Nazi doctors -- May Luhmann's social systems theory pertain to the Holocaust? -- Returning to the totalitarian cannon: 'Let there be a world free of evil!' -- Returning to the question: What makes us servants of extinction? -- 9. The sole terrorist's attacks on Norway, July 22, 2011 -- The terrorist's bombing of the government buildings -- The terrorist's massacre on the island: Recounting by some of the survivors -- The terrorist's surrender -- From the terrorist's "manifesto" on the Internet -- Counter-message by mass singing and rose-carrying -- From the terrorist's court proceedings and psychiatric diagnoses -- If accountable, how could he commit the bombing and massacre? -- Could some of the horror have been prevented? On The July 22 Commission's Report -- The terrorist's Internet-mediated voice cannot be silenced -- On the court's proceedings and verdict -- 10. From civilian rescuers to this question: Is armed violence declining and non-violent revolt incr -- Saved by the boat "Reiulf" which some of the youths stumbled across -- Risking their life, civilian boat owners rescue youths swimming from Utöya -- Restoring human dignity in spite of the Holocaust: Civilian rescuers.

The three-year-old orphans rescued from the Nazi concentration camps -- Altruism, interpersonal networks and group selection -- Is armed violence declining? From Einstein and Freud to Steven Pinker -- Is non-violent revolt beginning to prevail? From Gene Sharp to the Arab Spring and Women sitting dow -- Concluding words: An incredible event of reconciliation in Rwanda -- Glossary -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Name index -- Subject index.