# Psychiatrists’ Illustration of Awe in Empathic Listening Assessments: A Pilot Study

## TL;DR

This pilot study explores how psychiatrists experience awe during empathic listening sessions with patients, revealing themes of mindfulness and transcendence.

## Contribution

The study introduces an evidence-based framework for examining awe and non-agency in empathic listening within psychiatry.

## Key findings

- Awe and non-agency were consistently observed in both psychiatrists and patients during empathic listening assessments.
- Themes of mindfulness and transpersonal mindfulness emerged from the analysis of verbal and nonverbal interactions.
- The findings suggest a 'mindfulness-to-transcendence' framework for studying transcendence in psychiatry.

## Abstract

Background

“Awe” is typically an inspiring emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli signifying the transcendence beyond all cognitive frames of reference when we encounter the unexpected. Physicians’ experience of awe in clinical care interactions has not been studied in an empirical, evidence-based way. We aim to present a focused study of awe in a psychiatrist’s empathic listening (EL) assessments and propose an evidence-based framework to study it.

Methodology

This is an exploratory case series of a psychiatrist’s EL interactions (mean duration/x̄ of 46.17 minutes) with six patients (two males and four females) aged 32-72 years (x̄ =54.67, σ = 16.64). Using the method of autoethnography, the verbal and nonverbal aspects of the EL assessments were analyzed and open-coded to generate qualitative data.

Results

The study revealed that the data in all the case studies could be classed into two thematic groups, namely, mindfulness and transpersonal mindfulness. The emotions of “awe” and “non-agency” were ubiquitous in all six case studies both for the psychiatrist and patients.

Conclusions

Recognizing the awe and non-agency in EL interaction is essential in conceptualizing the “mindfulness-to-transcendence” framework and the first step toward the evidence-based study of transcendence/metaphysics in phenomenological psychiatry.