One hundred years ago, the word empathy entered the English language, coined by largely forgotten Cornell psychologist Edward Titchener, a disciple of Wilhelm Wundt. Over the ensuing decades, use of the word empathy exploded beyond the field of psychology, becoming central to how humans discuss understanding one another.

Most therapists understand empathy to be foundational to therapeutic practice and essential to its success. Research has demonstrated that empathy is a primary contributor to the strength of positive therapeutic outcomes. It’s a term so well-researched and operationalized that we rarely even question the origin of this obvious human faculty of fellow-feeling.

It is intriguing to learn that Titchener coined another word, attensity, that might be even more important than empathy in describing what therapists do. Titchener’s research involved understanding human attention through introspection; he coined the term “attensity” in the course of that work. He wanted a word for the power of attention itself—separate from the mere force of sensory perception. You could measure the strength of a stimulus—its “intensity” (how loud or how bright?). However, measuring the power of actual attention was something else.

To access that special quality of the mind and the senses engaged with the world required, he believed, a focus on the experience of our attention. His term “attensity,” then, can be considered the conceptual frame that enables us to understand human attention as the stuff of our inner lives.

But unlike empathy, attensity disappeared from history and from our field.

Disappeared until now, when a group of attention scholars and activists have proposed to revive it as an answer to some of the most pressing issues of our time. The book “Attensity: A Manifesto of The Attention Liberation Movement” will be published this week.

With the rise of modern warfare and........

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