Is emotional intelligence an infantile approach to life?

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You can tell it's the silly season when journalists have to take pot shots at the world around them. This kind of thing is most common during the summer recess, but these days it seems the Season of Goodwill is a good time to slag off the folks you depend on the rest of the year.

Writing in, what used to be, the respected Australian newspaper, The Age, David James, today offers the following definitions among others:

Emotional Intelligence. An illuminating way of looking at the world. If you are three years old.

Feelings. Something people have a right to inflict on others.

Leaders. Visionaries who sort the good strategies from the bad strategies and then do whatever they like.

But, as any psychoanalyst will tell you, within the words of satirists are hidden two things - their own and others' fears, and the truth that others dare not speak.

So, do you think most people believe that emotional intelligence is a naive approach to life, akin to that of a three-year old, or that it is something they know to be important and yet are secretly frightened of because they don't get it?

Are feelings, things that most people are terrified of because of the effect they have on them, and could have on others if they expressed their own?

And, are leaders machiavellian manipulators pursuing their own ends regardless of what they know is good?

Nothing like a little dark reflection on a cold day to bring out the gloom!

Best wishes

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GRAHAM WILSON
London + Oxford - 07785 222380
Helping Organisations & People Achieve Things They Never Dreamt Were Possible
grahamwilson.org; inter-faith.net

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