Criticism of the theory of emotional intelligence

In the second of the conferences that make up Intimacies frozen, Eva illouz begins by making a comparison between Samuel Smiles, author of Self-help (1859), and Sigmund Freud.

Although it is true that at present the postulates of these two authors tend to resemble each other to such an extent that psychology is confused with self help, the basic principles that originate them are considerably disparate.

The differences between self-help and psychology

While Smiles considered that "moral force could overcome a person's position and social destiny", Freud “He held the pessimistic conviction (…) that the ability to help oneself was conditioned by the social class to which they were belonged ”.

Therefore, for the father of psychoanalysis, "self-help and virtue" were not in themselves sufficient elements for a healthy psyche, because "only transference, resistance, dream work, free association - and not" volition " neither him "self control"- it could lead to a psychic and, ultimately, social transformation."

The fusion of psychology and self-help: the therapeutic narrative

To understand the approach of psychology to the popular culture of self-help we should attend to the social phenomena that began to be accentuated in the United States from the decade of the sixty: the discrediting of political ideologies, the expansion of consumerism and the so-called sexual revolution they contributed to augment a narrative of self-realization of the self.

In addition, the therapeutic narrative managed to permeate the dominant cultural meanings through the capillarity offered by a series of social practices related to the emotion management.

On the other hand, at the theoretical basis of the syncretism between psychology and self-help are the theses of Carl rogers Y Abraham Maslow, for whom the search for self-realization, understood as “the motivation in all forms of life to develop their possibilities to the maximum” was inherent to a healthy mind. This is how psychology became primarily a therapeutic psychology that, “by postulating an indefinite and constantly expanding ideal of health,” he made the self-actualization the criterion by which to increasingly classify emotional states into healthy or pathological.

Suffering and individualism in the therapeutic narrative

In light of which, Illouz presents a series of examples of how the therapeutic narrative depends entirely on establishing and generalizing previously a diagnosis in terms of emotional dysfunction to later assert the prescriptive capacity that is presupposes. Therefore, self-realization needs to make sense of the psychic complications in the individual's past ("what prevents being happy, successful and having an intimacy").

Consequently, the therapeutic narrative became a commodity with the performative capacity to transform the consumer into a patient (“Since, in order to be better –the main product that is promoted and sold in this new field–, you first have to be sick”), thus mobilizing a series of professionals related to psychology, medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, the publishing world and the TV.

And since "it consists precisely in giving meaning to common lives as an expression (hidden or open) of suffering", the interesting thing about the therapeutic narrative of self-help and self-actualization is that it involves a methodological individualism, based on “the demand to express and represent one's own suffering”. The author's opinion is that the two demands of the therapeutic narrative, self-realization and suffering, were institutionalized in the culture, as they were in keeping with "one of the main models for individualism that the State adopted and propagated ”.

Emotional intelligence as capital

On the other hand, the field of mental and emotional health resulting from the therapeutic narrative is sustained through the competition it generates. Proof of this competence is the notion of “emotional intelligence", Which, based on certain criteria (" self-awareness, control of emotions, personal motivation, empathy, relationship management "), allows to consider, and stratify, the aptitude of people in the social field and, especially, labor, while granting a status (cultural capital) and facilitates personal relationships (social capital) in order to obtain economic returns.

In the same way, the author reminds us that the implications of emotional intelligence in the safety of the self in the sphere of an intimacy that in the contemporaneity of late modernity is extremely fragile.

Bibliographic references:

• Illouz, Eva. (2007). Frozen Intimacies. Emotions in capitalism. Katz Editores (p.93-159).