By Jim Heffernan
My interest in this book formed as a result of my interest in feminism, or more properly, my interest in removing the chains that patriarchy applies to both genders.
This book was published in 1995 and was the first popular book dealing with the topic of emotional intelligence. It’s still valid. It’s 254 pages long with 73 pages of notes, appendixes, and acknowledgements. It’s divided into 4 parts with 16 chapters and it also have 5 appendixes.
I loved the book, but I was once a psychology major and stayed with it long enough to get upper level credits. I was fascinated by what he had to say about emotions and their development, but the material on brain anatomy I mostly skipped over. He has chapters on child development, marriage, and the work place.
Here’s an excerpt from page 171
”A child’s readiness for school depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn. The report lists the seven key ingredients of this crucial capacity—all related to emotional intelligence.
- Confidence. A sense of control and mastery of one’s body, behavior, and world; the child’s sense that he is more likely than not to succeed at what he undertakes, and that adults will be helpful.
- Curiosity. The sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure.
- Intentionality. The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective.
- Self-control. The ability to modulate and control one’s own actions in age-appropriate ways; a sense of inner control.
- Relatedness. The ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understanding others.
- Capacity to communicate. The wish and ability to verbally exchange ideas, feelings, and concepts with others. This is related to a sense of trust in others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults.
- Cooperativeness. The ability to balance one’s own needs with those of others in group activity.”
Those are qualities we should all have. It happens that I was sent to our parish’s 1stgrade when I was 6, but I only lasted a few weeks. I was told I “wasn’t ready” and was sent to another parish school that had a kindergarten. I suspect my chief deficiencies were in self-control and cooperativeness.
This book introduced me to the concept of attunement between infant and mother. I think this is something my mother and I achieved to a high degree.
Here’s an excerpt from page 90 I particularly enjoyed,
“Making love is perhaps the closest approximation in adult life to this intimate attunement between infant and mother. Lovemaking, Stern writes, “involves the experience of sensing the other’s subjective state: shared desire, aligned intentions, and mutual states of simultaneously shifting arousal, with lovers responding to each other in a synchrony that gives the tacit sense of deep rapport. Lovemaking is, at its best, an act of mutual empathy; at its worst it lacks any such emotional mutuality.”
This excellent book is available at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Library. I’m looking for a newer book that might polish the concept of emotional intelligence we need today.
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com
