autopathy, n. (Excessive) feeling for oneself; an instance of this.
Compare deuteropathy n. For Hellenistic Greek αὐτοπαθής a sense ‘speaking from one’s own feeling or experience’ is implied by the derivative adverb αὐτοπαθῶς. Now rare.
1647 H. More Philos. Poems i. iii. lxvi, Base fear proceeds from weak Autopathy.
1647 H. More Philos. Poems (note) Autopathy denotates the being self-strucken; to be sensible of what harms us, rather than what is absolutely evill.
1878 Fraser’s Mag. 17 262 A writer who, by cultivating his sympathies and weeding out his autopathies, might perhaps have grown into a sort of English Saint-Beuve.
1883 L. F. Ward Dynamic Sociol. II. xi. 371 In more natural contrast with autopathy, there might..be substituted for [the word] sympathy the allied expression altropathy.
1923 Jrnl. Philos. 20 92 It would certainly be quite as wide of the mark to reduce altruism to mere sympathetic joy and sorrow as to reduce egoism to ‘autopathy’.
1951 Yale Law Jrnl. 60 59 Autopathy… is often crudely melodramatic, finding..suffering and resolution in some otherwise very trivial swirls of the passing flux.
Etymology: Originally < Hellenistic Greek αὐτοπάθεια one’s own experience < αὐτοπαθής (of pronouns) reflexive ( < ancient Greek αὐτο- auto- comb. form1 + -παθής -path comb. form) + -εια -y suffix3. In later use probably independently re-formed < auto- comb. form1 + -pathy comb. form.