emotional intelligence and daniel goleman and howard gardner

When journalist Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence appeared in 1995, the time was seemingly ripe for a reconsideration of the idea of what constitutes intelligence. For more than two decades prior to Goleman's book, scholars had been exploring the notion that the standardized intelligence tests may measure only one kind of intelligence, a sort of logos-centered notion of smarts, and that other kinds of intelligence not only existed but were equally as important as traditional IQ measurements. Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, first published in a book in 1983, got the ball rolling by suggesting the existence of other domains of intelligence, such as the kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and mathematical. But Goleman carried Gardner's concept yet further by positing that the understanding and cultivation of the emotions themselves was an expression of intelligence as least as powerful as logocentric intelligence.

In Emotional Intelligence Goleman lists five measures of emotional intelligence, but this essay and the next will only be concerned with the first: the ability to identify one's own feelings as they are occurring. I will try to identify my own feelings right now, on this typical day, as they are occurring. I don't know where this will lead, but of course that is one of the points of Goleman's work--emotional awareness opens up vistas hitherto unexplored by the individual, such as taking a highway never travelled and stopping to notice the life that effloresces along that unexplored highway.

If, indeed, emotional intelligence is as important as traditional measures of intelligence, the quest to understand our emotional make-up and actions is no less important than the intellectual task. So there! Here we go.

Starting with A "Logocentric" Point

Even though I would like to probe my emotional "state" or awareness in these essays, I begin first with a historical note. I became convinced as long ago as the first semester of my freshman year in college (Fall 1970) of the centrality of understanding and "managing" the emotions. How? By reading Aristotle. In those days, I wanted to be a sort of modern rhetorician, one who could move a crowd at will by words fitly spoken and ideas well-developed. In that semester I read Aristotle's Rhetoric for the first time and was mesmerized by his point that the success of our persuasive efforts depends on our ability to "read" the emotions of the audience. Then, to my delight, he defined many of the emotions one after another. For example, anger is a "desire, accompanied with pain, for conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight that was directed against oneself or those near to one, when such a slight is undeserved" (1378a31-33, Stephanus pagination). I was convinced, therefore, that an understanding of the emotions lay at the foundation of effective communication, of winning an argument and, ultimately, of winning the hearts and minds of people.

What I didn't learn from Aristotle, however, was the importance of identifying and understanding my own emotions. So, for better or worse, here are my musings.

Greeting the Day

When I arise each day, I first check my "vital signs." That doesn't mean that I have a stethoscope lying next to the bed; it means that I first assess whether I am exhausted, refreshed, feeling tight or loose, well or not well. I have the dual fortune of rarely being ill and of sleeping well, and so I can usually assume that I will be strong and alert for the day, no matter how long it lasts, and healthy in body. I don't think that everyone can make those assumptions, and I am daily grateful to God/the Universe for these things. I often feel that it puts a kind of burden on me when I realize that I will have 17-18 hours of alertness and strength--a sort of burden exemplified in Jesus' teaching: to whom much is given, much is expected.

Each day consists of my not only greeting the day but of my trying to establish some early "order" in my day. I don't feel "forced" to establish this order, though I used to, but I generally try to do the following: make my bed immediately after rising, shave, get dressed, stretch muscles and make sure the house is fairly fully in order. I generally shower after my workouts during the day or evening. These combined tasks take only about 15 minutes, and then I feel I can "begin" my thinking and working. I never need coffee or other stimulant to get me going; I think this might not only be a sort of genetic disposition, but also might relate to the theological world (conservative Evangelicalism) in which I lived in my formative years (ages 18-25). I would arise in those days with hymns on my lips, bursting with prayers of gratitude, and would see coffee or other morning stimulants as a sign of lack of faith--that something other than God was needed to get me going. I mentioned this idea once to a friend, who was pretty dependent on the morning brew, and she just looked at me and said: "Well, here's to lack of faith," and quaffed her (pre-Starbucks) coffee. But something about just diving in after the house is in order has stayed with me.

Before "Work"

But before I get to my study and writing, which take most of my time these days, I tend to review my emotional state. Here is the bad news. When I do so, I almost invariably think of my past as providing fixed and unchangeable lessons which "injured" me and which, therefore, are "givens" as I approach my day. In addition, I think I am becoming more skillful at diagnosing precisely the kind of person I am and so, when this awareness is combined with a rather debilitating daily look at my past, I start in a more vulnerable and sometimes even hopeless frame of mind than my first greeting of the day might suggest. This isn't invariably the case, but it happens more often than not. Here are the three paths that I typically traverse in climbing the morning mountain:

(1) My deep past--and the reality of lack of choice in those days. (2) My marriage past (24 years)--and the dissociation of emotion from life by virtue of unspoken and spoken rules in the relationship.
(3) My growing sense that my intellectual patterns may reflect a sort of "Asperger's" focus and independence/isolation, even though I am socially adept enough so that I am taken as a genial, outgoing and even charming person.

The next essay will begin to unpack these ideas.

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