Emotional capital, a critique of the theory of emotional intelligence.

Second review of "Frozen Intimacies. Emotions in capitalism" by Eva Illouz.

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

Although it is true that nowadays 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 give rise to them are the same, the basic principles that give rise to them are considerably different..

The Differences Between Self-Help and Psychology

Whereas Smiles believed that "moral strength could overcome a person's social position and destiny," Freud "held the pessimistic conviction (...) that the ability to help oneself was conditioned by the social class to which one belonged."

Thus, for the father of psychoanalysis, "self-help and virtue" were not in themselves sufficient elements for a healthy psyche, for "only transference, resistance, dream work, free association - and not "volition" or "self-control" - could lead to psychic and, ultimately, social transformation."

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

To understand psychology's approach to the popular culture of self-help, we should pay attention to the social phenomena that began to take hold in the United States from the 1960s onwards: the discrediting of political ideologies, the spread of consumerism and the so-called sexual revolution contributed to the rise of a narrative of self-realization of the self.

At the same time, the therapeutic narrative succeeded in permeating dominant cultural meanings through the capillarity offered by a series of social practices related to the management of emotions.

On the other hand, at the theoretical basis of the syncretism between psychology and self-help are the theses of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, for whom the search for self-realization, understood as "the motivation in every form of life to develop its possibilities to the maximum" was consubstantial to a healthy mind. This is how psychology became primarily a therapeutic psychology. therapeutic psychology which, "by postulating an indefinite and ever-expanding ideal of health," made self-realization the criterion by which to increasingly classify emotional states as healthy or pathological.

Suffering and individualism in the therapeutic narrative

In light of which, Illouz presents a number of examples of how the therapeutic narrative depends entirely on first establishing and generalizing a diagnosis in terms of emotional dysfunction in order to subsequently assert its presupposed prescriptive capacity. So self-realization needs to make sense of the psychic complications in the individual's past ("what prevents one from being happy, successful and intimate").

Consequently, the therapeutic narrative became a commodity with the performative capacity to transform the consumer into the patient ("since, in order to be better - the main product promoted and sold in this new field - one must first be sick"), thus mobilizing a series of professionals related to psychology, medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, the publishing world and television.

And since "it consists precisely in giving meaning to ordinary lives as an expression (hidden or open) of suffering," the interesting thing about the therapeutic narrative of self-help and self-realization is that it involves a methodological individualism. the therapeutic narrative of self-help and self-realization is that it involves a methodological individualism, based on "the need to express and represent one's own suffering".based on "the need to express and represent one's own suffering". The author's view is that the two demands of the therapeutic narrative, self-realization and suffering, were institutionalized in the culture, as they were in line 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 by the competence 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 us to consider and stratify people's aptitude in the social and, especially, labor sphere, while at the same time granting a status (cultural capital) and facilitating relations with others. (cultural capital) and facilitates personal relationships (social capital) in order to obtain economic returns.

Likewise, the author reminds us that we should not underestimate the implications of emotional intelligence in the security of the self in the field of an intimacy that in the contemporaneity of late modernity appears extremely fragile.

Bibliographical references:

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