Great post, Lyn! Thank you for shedding light on the shallowness of EI.

Much of the problem, Lyn, is in EI itself. Just because I understand that someone is happy doesn't mean that I feel that person's happiness. As originally defined, EI is just that - an understanding of emotions, being intelligent about them. It's not empathy. It's not about feeling them, just understanding them. That's why psychopaths can often be very personable and friendly, demonstrating relatively high EI, when they need something from someone.

Furthermore, EI isn't intuition either. EI is more social; it doesn't help a solitary person solve non-relational problems. EI also doesn't deal much with the unconscious and the emotional drivers living therein. It doesn't give a construct for understanding them and their relationship to our conscious self, our ego. As a result, EI is oversold and under performs because problems are addressed superficially and mainly for communal and social settings. This is all right for simpler problems but not deeper, more complex ones - which most emotional ones tend to be.

I enjoyed your post. I'm looking forward to more on this topic.

Mike