Missing Each Other
An interview with Ted Brodkin
Missing Each Other: How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections by Edward Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra
When they set out to write Missing Each Other, clinician-researchers Edward (Ted) Brodkin, MD ’92, and Ashley Pallathra probed why people seem to “miss” or misunderstand one another so often and how they can reestablish strong relationships.
Brodkin, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Pallathra, a postdoctoral fellow at The Center for Emotional Health of Greater Philadelphia, LLC, conclude that connection is rooted in a concept called attunement.
Brodkin and Pallathra build on their research on autism and social skills as they explore the science of attunement and its four components: relaxed awareness, listening, understanding, and mutual responsiveness. They argue that embracing these practices can help people work together rather than against one another to solve problems of national and global import, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and racial injustice.
Read the full transcript (PDF)
Author reading
Listen to Brodkin read an excerpt from the book about the meaning of relaxed awareness:
Read the full transcript (PDF)
Edited excerpt from Missing Each Other: How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections by Edward Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra. Used with the permission of PublicAffairs. Copyright 2021 by Edward Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra.
Bonus clip
Hear more about some of the science behind attunement: