Rob Emmerling
I decided to create this page on Rob (aka Robert Emmerling, Psy.D.), the webmaster at the EI Consortium, in April of 2005 when I found out he was sending out defamatory emails about me. Without my prior knowledge, and without ever contacting me about his alleged "urgent concerns", Rob located sites that had links to mine and sent out emails to webmasters of those sites. In his emails he suggested I was "posing as an authority on emotional intelligence in an effort to exploit teenagers." According to Rob, over 50 sites dropped their link to my site after receiving Rob's email. (See this note on the effect his emails had on my site visits).
I feel very misrepresented by Rob and I am trying to get him to make some restitution. I would like him respond to my questions for him, post a public apology on his website and write directly to all the sites he contacted and apologize for misrepresenting me. So far he has ignorned all of my attempts to contact him.
I would also like to help him better understand the work I am doing with teenagers. For the past several yeas I have spent a lot of time chatting to suicidal teens and documenting our conversations. I have learned so much from them that I now feel compelled to tell their stories.
[2011 Note - we now have written a book of those stories Letters From The Unloved ]
I now have one of the web's highest ranked pages on teen self-harm and cutting. I have also started an online support group for self-harming and suicidal teens. My approach has proven so sought after by the teens that even with the help of a volunteer, (see page on Jerren) we can not handle the all the need for someone to listen to these teens. Rob, though, questions my motives in this work and has jumped to conclusions and defamed me without showing any understanding of what I have been doing, nor even any attempt to understand.
As time goes on it becomes increasingly clear that Rob's prime motivation for sending out the emails was not his concern about my work in suicide prevention. I have made repeated attempts to discuss his concerns with him directly and he has failed to respond. It therefore seems clear that Rob's real motive in trying to discredit me was just to lower my influence on the web. The fewer the links to my site, the lower my Google ranking. The lower my Google ranking, the less people see my criticism of the EI Consortium and my criticism of people like Rob and members of the Consortium, such as Dan Goleman and Maurice Elias. Yet even after Rob's attempt to sabotage my site rankings, my site continues to be number one on EI. Rob's site, by the way, is number two and has been second to mine for many years. It is understandable Rob would like to see this reversed, but I'd like to see him show a little more integrity. You can read more about all of this on this page if you want.
Rob, by the way, who was once just the webmaster for the EI Consortium's website, is now promoting himself as consultant in the field of EI. Thus his income depends not just on his salary as the webmaster anymore, but also on his reputation as an EI consultant. So this would obviously be a very personal motive for Rob not wanting potential clients to read my criticism of him. Before I created this page I had written an editorial which included criticism of him when he wrote to me and asked me how he and Goleman could post an article of theirs on my site. (See editorial 26 from August 2003) The editorial rose to a high ranking in Google when you searched for "Rob Emmerling", so even before I created this page devoted to Rob, he had reason to want to see my site rankings drop.
While what Rob did has disturbed me a great deal, and hurt my website traffic signficantly, at least for a time, I want to use this page on Rob to talk about more than just that. I want to let people know a few things about him since he is marketing himself as an authority on emotional intelligence.
I don't believe Rob is worthy of being called an authority EI. In my opinion he is mainly riding on the coattails of Dan Goleman. For the record, I don't believe Goleman is a credible authority on what I call emotional intelligence, either. The key to much of this is how we define emotional intelligence. If we define it as Goleman defines it, then fair enough. Goleman and his followers can call themselves and each other authorities and experts and go around the world making money promoting their concept of EI. But if we define it as something closer to what Mayer and Salovey have outlined (See their four branch model), then I don't believe it is fair to call either Goleman or Emmerling an authority on emotional intelligence.
S. Hein
Dec 9, 2005
Updated Feb 2006
Below is a copy of the site visits graph for eqi.org over the past 13 months.You can also see the past 20 months at the bottom of the index page, under the "unique visitors" section.
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As of February 3, 2006
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As you can see, before Rob's emails I had from 19,000 to 23,000 visitors per month from January to March 2005. After his emails in April, my sites visits quickly dropped down to as low as 10,400 in June. I can't be sure how much of this drop was from Rob's emails, but I would guess that he is responsible for most of the decline.
I am not sure how Rob feels about this at this point. He has never contacted me about any of this. Maybe he feels good that he had such a big impact on my site. Or maybe he feels disappointed that he didn't knock my site down from number one in Google on emotional intelligence. No one who knows Rob has contacted me to tell me how he feels either. Or maybe Rob doesn't share his feelings with anyone. It's impossible to know since Rob, as far as I know, does no personal writing on the net. He, like so many others making money off the words "emotional intelligence" simply tries to create an image of himself.
In any case, since June my site visits have been steadily going back up. January of this year was almost at the same level as January last year, before Rob's emails. I feel optimistic that my site will continue to climb and will stay number one, and not only the most visited site on emotional intelligence, but the most informative and most honest.
I'd like to explain one of the things that bothers me most about what Rob did. If there are vistors to my site, it will show up lower on Google searches for other things, such as teen suicide. What this means is that it is somewhat less likely a suicidal teen will find my site and contact us for help. And somewhat more likely that someone could literally kill themselves because of what Rob did.
I don't want to sound dramatic, and I realize the actual probabilities of this are low, but I believe it is a reality that there is now a somewhat lower chance that someone would find my site who needs it. And this is not saying anything about the thousands of others who did not benefit from a visit to my site last year or who are not visiting it now as a direct result of what Rob did.
I believe my site has some very valuable information on it, but I don't think it's just me who thinks this. My site would not be ranked so high in so many things if it did not have helpful information on it. (See samples of my site's Google rankings) Also, I regularly get emails from people thanking me. I just don't do a lot of self-promotion by posting the complimentary emails. I have some of them saved and I might still put them on sometime, but it seems there is always something more important to do. On the other hand if I did more self-promotion, maybe I would have more visitors and could help more people.
I really like to help people and I feel some kind of a "calling" to do it. I feel obligated to do it. I can't escape from helping people it seems. No matter where I go in no matter what country, I find things I want to write about and people who need someone to listen to them and teach them things I have learned and share on this site. Well, speaking of that, I am going to try to do some more "productive" work now. Thanks again for reading what I write.
S. Hein
Feb 3, 2006
A little while ago I did a search on "emotional knowledge". The first site I found was teach-nology.com. The site is a resource for teachers.
It had a list of links related to emotions, emotional intelligence etc. I saw that a description of my site was included on the list. But the link was removed. I immediately suspected that Rob was responsible for this.
More than anything I felt sad that there are many teachers now who won't visit my site now and won't get anything helpful from it. I'm still not sure what to do about all of this. I don't like to feel vengeful or hurtful. I don't want to be driven by my resentment of what Rob did. Yet on the other hand resentment, I believe, has a useful function, or it can. My section on resentment by the way, is good, I believe. And I feel sad that many teachers won't ever read it. Yet I also feel motivated to keep cleaning up my site so it can never again be the victim of an attack such as the one that Rob launched. I feel thankful for the people who continue to visit my site. I suppose this is what you could call a humbling experience. I feel humble I suppose right now. I don't feel very resentful or antagonistic. I don't have much motivation to enter into more conflicts or try to threaten or pressure people into putting their links back to my site. I don't feel optimistic that many people would anyhow. I think the majority of people don't want to get involved in anything controversial. I think of Josh Freedman for example, who I thought was somewhat of a friend of mine, who also took his link down. I think of Jack Mayer who told me that he took his link off to my site because he only wanted to link to sites that were focussed on research about EI, not about the motives of the people behind the site. This may be partially true, but I think the main reason Jack took the link down was because of my criticism of David Caruso. Jack took his link down before Rob ever started sending out emails.
Anyhow, I just wanted to make a note about this. And I guess ask anyone who believes my site is useful to write to... well, I am not sure who they would write to. I have to think about that some more. Maybe I will put Robīs email address on here or the members of the Consortium so anyone who wants to write to them can do it a little more easily. Iīm not sure but it bothers me that all those sites dropped their links, and it bothers me that I donīt even know which sites they are.
But back to the site for teachers. I saw that the EI Consortium is on their list of links. And I wondered if Rob himself really believes his site is a better resource for teachers than mine. Or if any or many teachers would think the Consortium site is better. The Consortium site even promotes itself as a site for the workplace, it hardly even tries to pretend it has information for educators. But anyhow, I just took a look at my resentment pages and realized I have about three of them in process and I want to finish the editing of them, so I will end this note here.
S. Hein
Feb 14, 2006
Salta, Argentina
Teach-nology
EI Consortium
Resentment
David Caruso
Jack Mayer
