Thank you for the story, Lyn. It's good he felt remorse. It's a good example of where rational decisions diverge from our emotions. It's also significant that he felt he could not easily control the urge to manipulate even though he was aware of it. It's good that he was able to realize that he needed your help.

Yes, you're right that Goleman includes "empathy" in his definition of EI; however, drilling down on his definition of empathy we find it's the "Ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people" and "skill in treating people according to their emotional reactions." Here is my reference link from an article he wrote: http://hbr.org/2004/01/what-makes-a-leader/ar/1

If you take his definition and contrast it with jut a couple from common dictionaries and not even consider the more involved definitions for it from psychology, we find:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/empathy

Thus, we find his definition is narrower and seems to purposely focus on empathy as a rational and conscious quality. Of course, this fits with the idea of "Emotional Intelligence" or being intelligent about emotions. Intelligence is a cognitive attribute, not an emotional, intuitive or unconscious one. For example, he didn't call his methodology Intelligent Emotions.

Still, the point is this: the foundation of EI is a rational one, not an emotional one. Therefore, as EI is defined it's more about "understanding" and "reacting" (a conscious observation) not about things such as "feeling" and "intuiting." Moreover, as this definition shows, EI focuses on "conscious" understanding and reactions. EI's definition is silent on the unconscious aspects of ourselves. Yet, we pick up much on an unconscious level about a person that flows upward as feelings for which we don't have any conscious awareness. EI's definition is silent with regard to deeper psychological influences such as our unconscious thoughts and feelings and how they translate into how we interpret others (i.e projections in psychology). Therefore, it's very possible for someone to have an high EI and be able to "understand" someone's happiness and be able to "skillfully deal with his reactions to happiness" but not be able to "feel" that person's happiness. This is the indirect conclusion we can draw from the silence of Goleman's definition of EI on these other attributes of empathy as found in even common dictionaries.

I welcome your thoughts on this perspective.

Thank you,
Mike