Are empaths real. Like are empathy disorders a real psychological thing or is Will Graham just a little special
They gave his “empathy disorder” a very patched-together “Hollywood science” explanation through various bits and pieces of dialogue and stuff in the show so it could sound semi-reasonable because it’s meant to for the plot and the character, but the answer is no. The term “empath” is used by new age spiritualists who think essential oils cure all ills to describe someone they think magically detects other people’s thoughts and emotions and has psychic powers…. and that’s literally what Will has. Yes, you could say that a lot of what he notices and how he thinks could be because of his own dark urges and repressed proclivities towards violence or his genius and skills alone, but some things he just pulls out of thin air that nobody could reasonably guess at. In the novels he has a sort of sixth sense for predicting big things about cases with little to no evidence that he gets mad and snappy about when people ask him to explain that he calls his “luck”, which I assume Bryan Fuller based his “empathy” off of somewhat. The original novels and the nbc show that’s adapted from them have definite details of magical realism. Long story short: empaths aren’t real, they’re scammy new age fiction. But in the fictional world of Hannibal where people can smell cancer and brain inflammations and magically detect who’s a criminal by seeing an aura of fire around their head and doctors and academic professionals don’t question any of that, of course they are
to be fair, it is kinda possible to smell inflammation haha. It’s actually not that uncommon with doctors or nurses…You get used to it after awhile, specially conditions that are more progressed.