Too Empathic Not to be Manipulated? the Ambiguity of Empathy in International Self Help Bestsellers

From an analysis of the 10 international best sellers on self-love on Amazon.com in last 15 years, empathy appears both as a quality and as a weakness: this literature, meant to boost people self-esteem, advice women not to empathize too much, especially with relatives. The argument is that you have to balance empathy and compassion towards others and compassion and self-love towards yourself to avoid the risk of being manipulated and energetically depleted. We expose the main points of this widespread rhetoric that directly links empathy and power in social interactions. Many questions arise: how to establish this balance? When empathy and compassion are too much? What is the link between empathy and recognition? The ambiguous nature of empathy appears in its relation to power, that is in its relation to recognition and miscognition, for the same person and at the same time.