Geetu Bharwaney

Introduction

My response to the first email from Geetu

My response to the second email from Geetu

A note about the word "simply"

More thoughts on honesty

April 21 thoughts & writing

Geetu's website

Most Recent Items

April 21 - More thoughts

April 19 - Second letter from Geetu

March 24, 2006 - Creation of this page

Geetu is someone who has been making money from the term "emotional intelligence" for quite a few years. She seems to be fairly well known in England, where she lives and has a consulting firm. She and I used to be on basically friendly terms until around the time I started criticizing Mayer and Salovey. Before that I had primarily criticized Dan Goleman on my site. I think around 2002 Geetu and I stopped emailing each other.

Then in March of this year I got an email from her. She was complaining to me about my site. She wanted to try to get me stop criticizing people like Goleman and BarOn so much. Basically it seems she wants to give the world a "positive" impression of emotional intelligence.

Her letter bothered me for several days and I finally decided to write about it. But with the recent shut down of my site, most likely thanks to Steven Stein at MHS, I was afraid to put the whole letter on my site. So I just put some quotes from it.

Then Geetu read what I wrote and sent me another email. This time she first asked me to take my page down on her, and then she threatened to try to use legal force to get me to take it down.

I don't think what I wrote is a violation of any laws, since I only copied parts of the letter. But I may change the letter a bit to take out more of the quotes. I am pretty sure it is not illegal to write my own response to a letter I get. If it is, then I am not sure what's happened to the concept of free speech.

I was afraid to put the whole email on my site because she might complain I am violating some kind of copyright and have my site shut down again, so I have decided to just copy some quotes from it.

Maybe I will write her and ask for her permission to put the whole thing on, I'm not sure yet. I don't really want to get into a debate with her. There are other things I'd rather be doing. Like taking pictures of Salta. But the letter has been bothering me enough for enough days now that I feel a need to write something. So here is what I am going to write...

First, she says she is going to "provide me" with "some (unsolicited) feedback" on my site. Then she says she "continuously" reviews other EI websites to try to keep "abreast" with what others are doing in the field and how this is "conveyed over the Internet worldwide." I am not sure why she felt a need to say all that, but anyhow, she said she wants to "improve the way we present information about emotional intelligence." I am not sure who she means by "we" because I don't think I am included in her group of friends and I know she isn't included in mine. Not that she is my enemy, but I haven't heard anything from her in years, except once or twice when she wrote to say she had changed her name or her website location or something.

One thing I resent about her letter is she said nothing at all about my personal life. I don't know if Geetu realizes that I have ever met Laura from Peru or how much I have cried, or how lonely I have been in the past few years before meeting Laura, or how many times I have thought about killing myself, or about the work I do with teenagers, or how much I resented what Rob Emmerling did. I don't know if Geetu even knows what Emmerling did or what I mean by the new word "Emmerlinged." There is no way she could be considered one of my friends if she doesn't know anything about all of this and if I don't know how she feels.

I really don't know who she thinks she is writing to. It seems she thinks she is not really writing to a human with feelings, unless she is trying to use human feelings to lay some guilt trips on me or influence me with lecturing to me like she might lecture to a small child. Well anyhow there are a lot of things I resent about the letter. Let's first name some feelings.

I felt lectured to, misunderstood, misrepresented, condescended to. There are probably more but I'll leave it there for now.

This is like being threatened by my hosting company to permanently drop my site and then saying "Have a great day", which is something one of their employees actually did. Probably without even realizing it.

Then she says "To improve the service that I think you are attempting to provide on your website, I believe that a more positive and comprehensive (rather than negative, selective and exclusive) approach would prove to be more appealing and compelling."

I am in kind of a laughing mood this morning and I have to laugh at that. First she is obviously guessing at what she thinks I am trying to do, rather than checking it out with me first. Then she starts telling me what she believes would be helpful. To her credit she realizes all of this is unsolicited, but she doesn't seem to be thinking much about how I might react. She doesn't seem to care much either. She never asks me how I feel about what she wrote for example, and never shows any understanding of how I feel about my site or the people I write about. I resent all of this, but I'm not sure right now what the more specific feeling word is. I am not sure either if Geetu has ever spent 20 minutes or more reading what I have said about resentment or anger being a secondary feeling. And I am not sure what she thinks about those sections of my site. I want to mention, though, that Geetu copied, with my permission, a large part of my feeling words list for her book she wrote a few years ago and she also cited me several times in it. I think as many times as she cited Goleman actually, so I don't want imply she is completely clueless about my work.

I also want to add that Geetu and I used to have more of a friendly personal correspondence, so I am not sure what happened. I tend to think she started making a fair bit of money off of the term emotional intelligence and off of re-selling the BarOn so-called test of EI.

Well I don't want to spend much time on this so I will try to summarize the rest of the letter. Geetu seems to want me to say that everyone's definition of EI is just fine with me. I don't know if she would want me to say that if a person defined EI as the ability to lie and con people to make money, then his definition is equally as valid as the Mayer Salovey definition, but this thought goes thru my mind. I also don't know if she would say that we could define an emotionally intelligent soldier as "someone who could obey orders to shoot unarmed people in the back as they are running away and not feel bad about it, and be able to sleep at night and laugh and drink with his buddies later, while totally putting it out of his mind."

This makes me think of the movie Ghandi. I believe Geetu's roots are in India where the British soldiers massacred thousands of unarmed Indian people. So I feel regret that Geetu has not been more supportive of me in my attempts to move people away from the Goleman and BarOn definitions of EI. If you haven't read about it, by the way, BarOn used his experience in the Israeli military to help him develop a test of coping skills. So he found out what kind of people make good soldiers, and then he and Steven Stein called it a test of emotional intelligence.

Now one of the ways they are using the test is to predict "commanding leaders" in the Israeli military. Here is a quote from some marketing propaganda:

I am guessing that what this means is that they gave the BarOn test to a lot of soldiers and then compared their results with those who make "good" leaders and they found out that there was a positive correlation. So this is why I say that BarOn's test predicts successful soldiers, though I am not totally sure if it is better at predicting the low level soldiers or the officers. Either way, I'm not too impressed and I strongly oppose him, MHS or anyone else calling the test a test of emotional intelligence.

Geetu also accuses me of giving out information which is not true or which is hard to prove. Well, if I am wrong about what I just said about BarOn and Stein, please let me know, Geetu, or anyone else.

What I have written about them has been up for months and no one has challenged it. The only thing Stein did was complain that I was violating his copyright on the MSCEIT test, which I would say is a pretty weak way of proving your case.

I invite Geetu, Reuven and Steven to correct me with facts and details and proof wherever they believe I am misrepresenting something.

Now Geetu says that BarOn is helping the field with all of his statistical research and blah blah blah. But to me he is not helping it no matter how much proof he has that his test predicts successful soldiers, insurance agents and hockey players if his tests is not really a test of emotional intelligence. If he is not actually testing EI, then his tests are misleading people. And that is exactly what I believe he is doing: misleading people.

If I give a test of typing skills and say that it predicts successful secretaries and then I call the test a test of emotional intelligence, would this be okay with people like Geetu who think I am being too critical and "negative" on my site?

I want to make it very clear that I believe in the concept of emotional intelligence. I believe it is vitally important to our survival as a species. I believe a good understanding and application of it would help prevent wars, not identify obedient, stress-free soldiers.

In fact, I believe a good test of EI would help us predict who would not make a good soldier, but who would instead make a good advocate for peace.

Anyhow, here is another quote from Geetu. She is complaining about me posting personal information about people I criticize, but she doesn't tell me who she is talking about or give me any specifics I could use to double-check my facts. Yet she also accuses me of not scientifically proving my case either for my version of EI or against the definitions marketed by Goleman, Stein and BarOn.

I am not sure if Geetu has a PhD or not, but she sure sounds like she is dangerously close to losing touch with her feelings and becoming a victim of phidish. Look at how long and complicated her sentence is. I am not sure how she really feels, other than "certain" about what I need on my site. But she forgets a minor detail....that it is my site, not hers. David Caruso forgot this too last year when he tried to pressure me to change my site contents. I feel kind of offended and kind of possessive about my site. I like my site. I love my site in fact. It is where I express myself. Where I meet like minded people. Where I have fun and rant and rave. I am in love with my site and would definitely make love to it if that were somehow possible!

And it is where I help the teenagers. And - and this is very important - they like my site, too.

I take seriously what they tell me, but not what people like Geetu tell me. I lost a lot of respect for Geetu as a result of her email. I don't really feel hostile towards her, but I don't feel friendly towards her either.

Later she talks about "professional ethics" which shows she really doesn't understand how I feel about that term. I have written about it before but in her continuous reviews of EI sites I guess she missed that editorial. I doubt she will feel very enlightened when she reads what I wrote about the APA guidelines, for example, but I will put the link in at the bottom of this editorial, just in case anyone else wants to have a look.

Then she talks about "moral issues" but she doesn't explain what she means by the word "moral". She just assumes that I share her definition of it and that it is a word which has some emotional power with me. Actually, it is not a word I use and it is a word I dislike since it is so subjective.

Then she tells me that some of my information is "simply incorrect" and then says "

But this fails to show me where anything I have written is incorrect. I never said that Goleman didn't do any of that. But anyhow, I really have to laugh again when she says "that most prestigious university." Well, sorry but I am not too impressed with it. Nor am I too impressed with Yale, where David Caruso was a post-doctoral fellow in psychology and still thinks that people do things because they are evil.

And note how she says "EVEN" in caps. This is one of the reasons I felt lectured to. And then she implies I might be criticizing Goleman simply because I don't like him. Then she adds insult to injury by saying "for some reason or another" as if she has no idea why I might not like him.

What this implies to me is that she has not spent much time reading the page I have on Goleman. It is quite detailed and explains why I don't like Goleman pretty well, I'd say. Also, I don't just have my own opinions of Goleman, I have quotes from a lot of people. Maybe Geetu just didn't have the time to read all of my writing, for some reason or another. lol.

I am sorry to make fun of her. I don't really think she is a bad or "evil" person. She probably does feel strongly but has a hard time expressing her feelings with feeling words or taking responsibility for them. I am not sure, for example, why she really felt so motivated to write me and lecture to me. I feel a bit skeptical and cynical though. I suspect that one reason might be because she has been promoting BarOn's test and making money off of it. Maybe a lot of money. I really don't know, and I doubt she would want me to know.

Then she says I "dismiss Bar-On as if he were a demonic combination of a medieval alchemist and stereotypic Jew who is involved in this field for the money." I really don't believe that is fair to say, nor do I know how she came up with that combination. I do believe he has been overly influenced by the less healthy parts of the Jewish culture and I definitely dismiss him as a representative of anything called emotional intelligence, but the rest of what Geetu accuses me of seems pretty unfounded. If she wants to write back and be more specific, then I'd appreciate it because I want my criticism of BarOn to be taken seriously on its merits rather than just labeling him in the way Geetu seems to believe I portray him. For the record, I don't have much against BarOn personally. But I resent him making money off of the term emotional intelligence and going around claiming he coined the term EQ. If Geetu wants to show me some support for this claim, I'd like to see it. She seems to know him personally so maybe she can ask him for a copy of the unpublished draft of his PhD dissertation where he claims to have used it. If she sends it to me I promise I will post it on my site, with his permission of course.

This reminds me. Why doesn't Reuven or BarOn have a site of their own? Why do we know so little about them other than the marketing hype? Who are these people really?

Anyhow, then Geetu keeps defending BarOn and says again "(EVEN if you dislike it or him for one reason or another)". Once was bad enough, but she felt so strongly she had to repeat it.

I'd really like to quote more of what Geetu wrote, but I am afraid to, given the recent shut down of my site by Stein and MHS. Geetu tells me that BarOn has been honored by this and that group, but I am still not impressed. I can pretty much guarantee that none of the people who think BarOn's test is actually a test of emotional intelligence have read my page criticizing him. They probably haven't seen any criticism of him. I'd say this is because there are simply too many people making money off of his and Goleman's propaganda.

Then Geetu says that to reject his "findings and conclusions:" I would have to re-run the numerous studies that he and others have conducted. But what Geetu misses is that I am not rejecting his "findings and conclusions". I am rejecting his claim that his test is a test of emotional intelligence.

Like with the typing test. I don't care how many studies show that it is a good test of predicting fast typists. It still is not a test of emotional intelligence.

But to be more specific with respect to BarOn's test. Remember that BarOn perfected the test in the Israeli military. So we have a test that is good at predicting who will be "successful" soldiers. And it is not surprising to me that the same test would predict who would be good students in a typical school or business. The same kinds of qualities make a person "successful." For example, the abilities to obey, to compete, to memorize, to cope with unnatural stress, to not feel, and to put someone else's orders ahead of your own conscience and instinct.

Geetu also says that Goleman has praised BarOn's work but with Goleman's level of integrity, this is not much to boast about. On my page on Goleman I have several examples of him saying nice things about just about everyone and their sister. This is a very obvious way to make more friends and get your name in front of even more people.

Then Geetu says I have attacked other "well-intentioned contributions to this wider area". Now first let me talk about the well-intentioned part. What does this mean really? And who is to decide what is well-intentioned? Was Geetu's letter "well-intentioned" or was it self-serving? If I said "Oh, gosh, Geetu, you know you are right, thanks tons." And then I started promoting the BarOn test as the greatest thing since sex, wouldn't she likely make more money in the future than if I kept up my "attacks"?

Second, Geetu likes the idea of a "wider" area of emotional intelligence. In other words, she doesn't want the term EI restricted to the Mayer Salovey definition. She likes being able to tell her clients that the BarOn test is a "scientifically validated test of emotional intelligence". This sounds very impressive. I grant you that. But I say it is a lie. I say it is not a test of emotional intelligence. I am sorry that Geetu may be losing money because of my website, but I am not going to start saying I believe in something when I don't.

In addition to Goleman and Bar-On, you have also attacked others who have attempted make well-intentioned contributions to this wider area; however, these two examples will suffice to make my point. Steve, I truly think that if you could present the wider picture of this construct and the various ways it is studied, measured and applied, whilst acknowledging the ever-increasing number of contributions in the field, you would truly succeed in reaching a larger group of people.

Then Geetu ends her letter with this. She almost sounds like Rob Emmerling when she says "simply"

By the way, if you are reading this, Geetu, and feel "copyright infringed", then please let me know rather than writing to my hosting service. I promise I will edit it and I will feel thankful you wrote to me first, not resentful that you didn't.

It seems BarOn and MHS are being more careful now about not calling the BarOn EQi a test of emotional intelligence. They sometimes now call it a test of "social emotional intelligence" On Geetu's website, though, she is still saying that the EQi is of the three "emotional intelligence tests" her company offers.

She says "We offer 3 different emotional intelligence assessments" then lists two versions of the EQi test and then the MSCEIT.

I found out that Geetu and Reuven also co-published an article together, so this would make it more understandable why she would want to defend Reuven and persuade me to stop criticizing him so much. Here is the article citation: (Geetu was formerly Geetu Orme)

First, I'd want to say something about the promise I made to Geetu. I promised her I would edit what I wrote in my response to her first email if she wrote me. Well, since she did write me and I promised I guess I have to do it. But I just re-read the letter and I am not sure what I would take out or how I would edit it. I am not going to just take the whole page down, as she would like me to do. But I will edit parts of it if she tells me specifically which parts she wants me to edit. I'd feel better and have more respect for her, and feel less hostile towards her if she would explain why she wants me to edit my response and if she could use some feeling words. I know it is a lot to ask people to use feeling words and to explain their feelings. But I believe if a person is making money from the term emotional intelligence and promoting themselves as a consultant on EI, and re-selling tests which are claimed to be tests of emotional intelligence, then we could ask that they be able to identify and explain their own feelings.

And I would ask Geetu to take a close look at the Mayer Salovey four branch model of EI and note the part where it talks about the ability to "express needs". Here is the direct quote:

Ability to express emotions accurately, and to express needs related to those feelings.

I would say that Geetu has some unmet emotional needs she is trying to fill, but I would guess she isn't likely to be able to quickly identify them. So I'd challenge her to give it a try.

Truly, I would prefer she didn't write me back if she is going to keep attacking me and threatening me. Well, let's say I felt attacked and threatened by her second letter. I don't know if Geetu cares how I feel. I am guessing she doesn't care much. But it's helpful to know how someone else feels when you are trying to get them to do something and you aren't in a position to force them to do it. if you are going to use force then it doesn't matter much how they feel.

I guess that Geetu thinks she can force me to take my page down on her, but I am pretty sure she is wrong. She might be able to force me to edit it, but not take it down. So that leaves her feeling a bit powerless, I'd guess. But I suspect it is unlikely that she would tell anyone she feels powerless. People who are making money from the term EI don't seem to be very good at expressing their feelings, generally speaking.

I would guess that this could be partly because those who are profiting from the term EI know on some level that they are misleading people for their own personal gain. In a word, they are acting falsely. And when you are acting, you don't want your feelings to give the truth about you away. You want to keep up the act. Acting and performing is how you are successful in schools and businesses. Act successful and most people will think you are. Like the book "Dress for Success." There actually is a book by that name and I actually read it when I was around 20 years old and looking for my first job in the corporate world.

Now I don't think I would make a very good model for the book's front cover. In fact I just bought a second hand shirt yesterday for about 70 cents US! I take pride in the fact that I don't own a tie, don't own a suit, and sometimes buy my clothes from second hand stores. The shoes I wear, for example, I bought in a second hand "op shop" in Australia.

I am not sure what Geetu takes pride in. And I really don't care much. What I'd like is for Geetu to just leave me alone. I want to spend my time doing other things. But since this is bothering me I feel a need to write about it.

I laid in bed for probably about an hour this morning thinking about Geetu and her second email. It is 10:14 now and I am feeling frustrated and resentful. I was feeling hostile before. Then I started feeling more calm and decided I would analyze Geetu's site to see what I could learn from it and I would write something useful about all of this for my site.

I want to keep improving my site. It's one of the few things that gives me satisfaction. My site is kind of like a child I guess. I don't know if Geetu has any children or how she would feel if I criticized them or told her how I thought she should be as a mother. I am guessing she would feel offended and defensive and possibly hostile.

Anyhow, one thing I don't like about people like Geetu is we don't know much about them. I am going to read her site and see what I can learn, but take someone like Dan Goleman or Reuven BarOn or David Caruso. What do we really know about these people? Mostly they are just giving us an image of themselves. But none of them do any personal writing. None of them tell us what they believe about religion, education or politics. Why is that?

I'd say it is because they are all mostly interested in making money. As I think Geetu is.

I like to think of myself as a writer these days, a bit of a bohemian one. And bohemians aren't know for their interest in the pursuit of money and material things. I like that image of myself. So if I am going to try to market an image of myself, it would be that I guess. But I am not very interested in marketing any images of myself. I don't care too much what people think of me. I care about writing what comes from my heart and mind as directly as possible, with the least censoring based on the desire for others to approve or on the fear of them disapproving.

And there's the problem for me. I feel very critical of the people who are making a lot of money in the world and who are killing a lot of people or punishing them and putting them in jails or isolation rooms or ISS rooms in schools. In other words, I feel highly critical of the status quo. And Geetu is what I would call a full fledged member of that.

Now I want to point out that I didn't send an email to Geetu criticizing her or trying to get her to change something on her website before she wrote me. I haven't written anything about her in years on my site. So in other words, if Geetu feels resentful about what I am writing I would ask her to ask herself "who started this?" Taking some responsibility might help Geetu feel better. I am not sure if she has read my writing on resentment, but I kind of doubt it.

- She has shown zero empathy for the pain I've been in over the past few years. In her second email she didn't even mention anything about Laura or about feeling suicidal. In my first response I said: "I don't know if Geetu realizes that I have ever met Laura from Peru or how much I have cried, or how lonely I have been in the past few years before meeting Laura, or how many times I have thought about killing myself, or about the work I do with teenagers, or how much I resented what Rob Emmerling did." Yet Geetu didn't mention any of this in her second mail. What this tells me is Geetu cares nothing about me. I feel cared about 0 in other words. She seems to only care about her image. Well what image is it that she wants the world to see? I feel very cynical, critical, skeptical. Let's not forget Geetu is making money, probably a lot, from the term emotional intelligence. This leads me to the next thing which bothers me...

- She is still calling BarOn's test a test of emotional intelligence on her website.

Ok, I think I will stop there. That is the thing that bothers me most I guess. The fact she still calls the BarOn EQi a test of emotional intelligence.

I am not sure how much time I will spend on looking at her site when I get to an Internet cafe. I feel very resentful I am taking time away from doing other things. Today I need to move out of my old room and turn in the keys. And I need to make a decision about how to renew my visa here in Argentina, since I've been here almost three months. And there are a lot of other things I'd rather be doing.

I feel violated by Geetu. Robbed of my time. If someone robs you will you are minding your own business you are probably going to redirect your thoughts and feelings and probably actions to that. It's not that easy, especially for highly sensitive people to just "get on with things" as the British love to tell people to do.

This bothers me. It bothers me a lot. I resent what she is doing with her website and her consulting practice and I resent what she wrote to me in both emails. Mostly the resentment comes from feeling violated, invaded, attacked, judged, lectured to, not understood, threatened, not cared about. I think most of all what hurts is feeling not cared about.

I have been in so much emotional pain over the past few years and Geetu has not even acknowledged it. Hasn't even mentioned or alluded to it. So it is unlikely I am going to feel much compassion or empathy for her and her discomfort at what I am writing about her.

I want to be left alone by her. I don't want any more emails from her in my inbox. I might not even read the next one she sends. If she wants to write about me, she can put something on her site. I really resent her writing to me. I feel very invaded. If she had written a more understanding, empathetic letter I wouldn't resent it. But the way she writes really irritates me. I felt very hostile when I got her second email. This leads me to something else...

I am starting to think Geetu is a fake, too. Like the other people I have written about. I say that because she is getting money from people by claiming to be a consultant and probably an "expert" on emotional intelligence. Yet she doesn't know how to write an email which shows empathy and understanding. Or which expresses her feelings in a non-attacking way. Or more directly she doesn't seem to know how to use "I messages" to express her feelings. I'd give her a pretty low score on emotional literacy.

I just had an idea, if Geetu wants me to help her with her EI skills, as I see them, she can pay me and I will be her consultant. Or she can just read my site for free and learn a lot. This is something I doubt people can do with her site. I am pretty sure it is one big advertisement for her consulting services. If Geetu really cared more about people than money, she'd give more of her ideas away, as I do with my site.

And I have a question for Geetu. Why does she think her site is not number one or even in the top five, and I am pretty sure not in the top ten, on emotional intelligence?

I am tempted to start giving Geetu suggestions and saying something like "I recommend you..." but I know that is offensive and futile. And not "effective" as David Caruso would say.

First, it's therapy for me. Second, I hope it is helpful to others. And third I guess, I hope its helpful to Geetu. But my goal is not to help Geetu. It is not to change her or influence her except maybe to influence her to leave me alone. I don't like to threaten people but I hope she is smart enough to realize that if she keeps writing me in the same style she has in her first two emails, it is likely I will feel a need to write about it again. So if her goal is to have me say less about her on my site, then probably attacking me or threatening me some more is counterproductive. And therefore not rational, logical or might we say "emotionally intelligent?'

There was something that bothered me about this but I didn't really identify just what it was. Now I am thinking that when a person says something like this it is like they are trying to minimize what they are saying, which, in effect is like telling you that if you have a strong reaction to it, you shouldn't, because they were "simply" doing something very innocent. So this seems to me an attempt to invalidate your feelings before you even have them. Or we might call it "preemptory invalidation."

If Geetu would like me to cooperate with her, I'd like her to answer a few questions so we can honestly inform the public about what's going on under the term of emotional intelligence. For example:

- Has she ever seen a copy of the dissertation draft in which Reuven claims he used the term EQ?

- Has she ever asked him about it? Would she want to know if no copy of it existed?

- Does she know exactly when Reuven started calling his test a test of emotional intelligence? Would she want to know?

- How much does she make off of each EQi test that she re-sells? I say "re-sell" because I believe she is basically a distributor for the tests.

- Does she believe it is fair to call the BarOn EQi a test of emotional intelligence and why?

I still feel bothered by Geetu and what she is doing. I spent some time on her site the other day and found a bunch of articles she wrote for what is supposedly a journal of some sort. The publication is called

I feel a bit skeptical about this publication. One thing I don't like is the word performance. It makes me think of acting, being emotionally false, manufacturing feelings and dolphins giving a show at Sea World. Another thing that bothers me is that on one of the publisher's or editor's websites I read that the journal claims to have been around since 1993. Now I am pretty sure that they weren't calling it Competency & Emotional Intelligence Quarterly back then. I say this because Dan Goleman's book came out in 1995. Before that almost no one in the world was using the term emotional intelligence. If I had lot of extra time I'd write to Neil Rankin, who is the editor of the publication and ask him what they were calling it back in 1993 and when they changed the name to add the emotional intelligence part. I'd be very, very, very surprised if he told me I was mistaken and that they really were using emotional intelligence in the title back in 1993. As always, I invite him or anyone else to correct me if I am wrong. Interestingly, people complain a lot about my site, but they don't seem to offer specific facts to show that I have lied about anything or misstated or misrepresented anything. So I would like to ask Neil Rankin to tell us all the truth about what the name of the journal was in 1993. Just like I would like to ask Reuven BarOn when he started calling his test a test of emotional intelligence.

Anyhow, there are a couple more things which bother me about this publication. One is that Geetu has about 20 articles in it. Let's compare this with the work of Jack Mayer. I think it is pretty safe to say that Jack doesn't even have 10 articles in any one publication. I don't even think he has five. So this makes me suspect that Geetu is a pretty good friend of Neil Rankin or that at the very least they are business associates with the common goal of making as much money as they can from the term emotional intelligence while it is hot. (And before people realize that tests like Reuven's are not really tests of emotional intelligence.)

Right now I will add that I would feel pretty upset with Geetu if I were a business executive and I had paid her a lot of money to come into my company and test my employees on their emotional intelligence, and then I found out that the test she was using, the BarOn EQi is a sham. I would be pretty upset if I knew the truth about Reuven BarOn and how he made himself famous and how he has misled people for years. I would feel betrayed by Geetu. I would feel misled by her. I would feel taken advantage of by her. And I might even file a lawsuit against her.

Honestly, I think it is only a matter of time before someone does just that: files a lawsuit against someone like Geetu or Reuven or Steven Stein, or even David Caruso. It doesn't take too much investigation to see that their claims are based on very, very weak foundations. At this point I have no intention of starting a lawsuit myself, but I honestly hope that someone does, and I hope they do it soon, before more people are conned out of their money and lied to about their "emotional intelligence."

If I were Geetu, I would be a little more careful about what I say about BarOn's test. I would feel a little nervous that someone might come along and sue me one day. I hope Geetu actually does feel this way, so she will stop claiming that she is giving tests of emotional intelligence and stop claiming that studies show all kinds of things are linked to emotional intelligence based on the BarOn's EQi.

But back to the publication. The fact that they call it a journal is a little offensive to me. Journals typically are published by people in academia and the articles in them are typically quite closely reviewed by several people. It is not that easy to get your articles published in a serious journal. Their publication reminded me of this quote by Annie Murphy Paul (a Yale graduate, by the way) in which she criticized Dan Goleman

And in a serious academic journal, the authors of the articles don't promote their business services, as Geetu did in at least the one article I read, something about "God's will. The title itself offends me and I would suspect it would offend a lot of people who don't think much of mixing gods and science. At any rate, in that article, Geetu says

By the way, I'd like to ask Geetu who else, besides those making money from the EQi, is saying that the BarOn test is "the most valid and reliable measure of emotional intelligence in the world today", or who else is even calling it a test of EI at all? And who is saying that it is not a test of EI? I am not sure if Geetu is familiar with this quote so I will attempt to bring it to her attention:

This quote is from an article by two people who are not making money from the BarOn test, Catherine Daus at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Neal Ashkanasy, The University of Queensland. Nor, as far as I know, are they making money from any of the so called tests of EI, so it is unlikely they had financial motives in making their statement. They are not business consultants. They are university professors. (As are Jack Mayer and Peter Salovey.) So who do we put more faith in? Geetu, the business consultants, and the marketing people at MHS -- or the university professors?

Finally, in a serious journal article, the authors typically don't just promote or present one side of something, as Geetu also did in the article about "God's will".I say this because Geetu only talked about the BarOn EQi and never once mentioned the MSCEIT or either Mayer or Salovey. I suspect that Geetu likes to promote the EQi because it fits in better with her consulting services. In other words, she can make more money from it than she can with the MSCEIT. The BarOn EQi seems to be a consultant's delight in fact, with all of its variables and opportunities for number crunching and writing impressive looking management reports. This reminds me of the mock of an ad I had for the BarOn EQi which Steven Stein or someone complained about also. I am getting pretty fed up with people trying to tell me what I can and can't put on my site, simply because I am making them look bad. So I will figure out something to do about that.

Anyhow, I was thinking more about something Geetu said. She made some comment about Harvard, calling it "that most prestigious university." Well, I want to say again that I am not impressed by anyone who either gets into or graduates from Harvard. I would be impressed I guess if they got in and left, like Bill Gates did. But definitely not if they got a degree in psychology and then later wrote a book misleading millions of people around the world, like Goleman did.

And I seriously doubt a person is more able to talk about their feelings, or is more compassionate after they have graduated from Harvard. And I seriously doubt anyone could be very interested in feelings, or put a high priority on them if while in highschool they jump through all the hoops they need to in order to get into Harvard.

I knew someone quite well who got accepted into a PhD program at Harvard. Her name is Lisa Haueisen. She helped me with my 1996 book. If you check the acknowledgements you will find her name. (source) Now Lisa was a very smart (obviously) and very sensitive person. But also very insecure. Her parents had a lot of money. I visited their house. Her father had a yacht. He had his own consulting business. Now do you think that Lisa and I have stayed in touch? Do you think she has helped me with my work with suicidal teenagers? Do you think she would have the time to? I am not sure what Lisa is doing now. When I get to the Internet cafe I will look up her name in google. I suspect I will find her name on some academic publications. But for now I will say that since the day Lisa left for Harvard I have never heard from her again.

I could tell you some more about Lisa, about her love life, how she handled her feelings, but I don't want to cause her needless pain. Sadly, if Lisa read what I wrote about her just now it is unlikely she would be able to express her pain as pain, it would most likely come out as hostility. I would guess that by now Lisa has become a master at defending herself and masking her pain. Not to mention a master at attacking people. Lisa is another example of what I would call the dark side of emotional intelligence, but not to the same extreme as some of the teens I have known. Lisa is not, or at least wasn't, the kind of person who would hurt anyone for the mere pleasure of it. She would only hurt someone who had hurt her first, but then she would be able to do it with a highly refined skill.

I actually hope Lisa is pretty happy these days. Happier than I am. I hope she has some fond memories of our time together. But I suspect she feels uncomfortable by me writing about her, uncomfortable thinking about me and how close we were physically and emotionally for a brief time. And she probably feels very defensive about what I said about her family. But since I have gotten on the topic, I want to tell a couple more of my long guarded "secrets". One is that Lisa was always trying to win her parents approval. She tried hard to make good grades, for example, so they would be happy. When she was young she once won a spelling contest, and as she walked back to her mother, Lisa said "See, I told you I could do it." What this tells me is that her mother had doubted her. So Lisa felt underestimated, unsupported, not believed in and resentful. And Lisa wanted to prove something to her mother, and had a deep unmet need for her mother's approval. But I think Lisa would deny she had these feelings and would defend her mother.

The day I met her mother, the mother had just come back from some trip. She wanted to show Lisa the pictures. I was struck by how little interest the mother had in Lisa or Lisa's life, and how much need she had to show off the photos. It was clear the mother had never received enough attention from her own mother and or father, so she was still trying to fill her unmet emotional needs for attention through Lisa. Now Lisa would probably deny all of this and defend her mother valiantly, but it was blatantly obvious to me.

I feel sorry for Lisa. I hope she has had a big change in values and priorities, but it is pretty unlikely. I feel bad singling her out so to speak, but I can't stop telling the Lisa story without adding a couple more things. One is that she would go shopping to try to stop her emotional pain. She had probably about a hundred CD's. And she once bought some poster about angels, even though she didn't really believe in them. It was a comforting thought to her at the time. This makes me wonder if Harvard accepts people into its PhD programs who believe in angels, or heaven and hell, or in "evil", as Yale seems to. And it makes me wonder if we could really say that a school like Harvard or Yale is worthy of prestige if they let their graduates leave with as little understanding of human nature and science as in the David Caruso case, or with as little integrity as in the Dan Goleman case. And I wonder if it would be possible of desirable for a school to withdraw its diploma in the case of someone like Dan Goleman. Sadly, I suspect the people who control the money at Harvard are quite happy with Dan.

But anyway...something else is that Lisa told me she had worked for some big name financial firm like Goldman Sachs -- I think as an intern. One of the guys there who was making a lot of money treated her very badly. Used her. It really hurts me now to think of what he did. He basically got her drunk and took advantage of her, then insulted her, if memory serves me. If that wasn't exactly the case, it was very close to it. What is most sad maybe is that Lisa didn't feel abused by him. Instead she saw it as some kind of a challenge. She told me she wanted to sleep with him again just to prove something. To redeem herself I guess. I apologize to Lisa for putting all of this up here, but it is all true, and if it isn't then she can correct me. But like most insecure, over-educated, emotionally intelligent and emotionally damaged people, it is very unlikely she will do that. Instead she is more likely to either attack me and try to force me to take down what I wrote, or just try to ignore me, while feeling resentment inside for a long time.

I am using Lisa as one example of a graduate from that "most prestigious university" -- good old Harvard. But I am sure there are many more. I don't like Harvard grads, generally speaking. I don't like Cambridge grads either. Or people who tell young people that it is an honor to get accepted into Harvard or Cambridge. No, I don't think it is an honor at all. I think it means you have been nearly completely brainwashed to believe what the adults have told you all your life and that you have never done much of your own thinking.

I think it means you are too insecure to believe you can make a living without going to a university. I think it means you don't have the self-confidence to start your own business, (as Demian here in Argentina has done.) I think it means you lack confidence in your ability to learn on your own. I think it means you don't put enough value on traveling and don't realize you can learn much more from traveling than by staying in the same country you've always lived in. I think it means you think you have been taught that you need a degree or else your parents won 't be happy or future employers won't hire you. I think it means you are part of the status quo. And I think that is something to feel ashamed of, not proud of.

Getting back to Geetu, I was thinking about a teenager I talked to last night. Her name is Felicity. That is the name her parents gave her at least. She prefers the name Flick. She is 15 and goes to a private school in England. She is very smart, very sensitive. Yet she has tried to kill herself.

So how would Geetu explain this? Would Geetu last 10 minutes talking to Flick? I doubt it.

I was thinking that Geetu and people like her are partly responsible for teenagers killing themselves. How so, you might ask.

Well, Geetu seems to be pretty much a total conformist at this point in her life. She is going around giving keynote speeches to business executives. But I can pretty much promise you that some of the teenage daughters of these executives have thought of killing themselves, and some may have even done it.

But does Geetu talk about this with them? I doubt it. It would be too uncomfortable for them and bad for Geetu's business and bank account. So if Geetu isn't talking about it, isn't writing about it, isn't doing anything about it, and if instead she is supporting schools who force young females to wear uniforms, even dress up in suits and ties, like little business executives, then I would say Geetu is part of the problem.

Now I don't know how Geetu feels about girls wearing ties in the schools in England. I invite her to let me know if she is opposed to it. But I am guessing Geetu doesn't have a big problem with it and might think this helps them prepare to be junior and then senior executives and therefore "successful."

I also don't know how Geetu feels about punishing a teenage female for not going to school or not doing the work they are told to do. The other day I was talking to Jen and she told me if she didn't do her work or if she talked back to the teachers they would punish her by making her stay after school and copy rules from the rule book.

Now I'd like Geetu to think about that for a while. I'd like her to read the pages I have on Jen. I'd like her to meet Jen. To call her on the phone or chat with her. After all Jen is right there in England. I'd like to know if Geetu agrees with punishing someone like Jen. And if she agrees with punishment for whenever a young person disobeys a school authority. I'd like to know if Geetu thinks we need more punishment in the world or less. And if she thinks we need more obedience or less.

I'd like to know more about Geetu. Maybe I have made some incorrect assumptions. If so, I invite her to let me know. I said before that I wanted her to leave me alone, but I've changed my mind. I welcome her to write whatever she wants. And to let me know exactly what she will permit me to post on my site and what she doesn't want me to post. And I'd like her to tell me just what bothers her so much about my page and what exactly she is afraid of. I am guessing she is afraid of losing face, as they say, looking bad in other words. Well, I believe it's okay for her to look bad and it's actually good that she has someone criticizing her and challenging her to be a bit more honest.

I read something about building bridges in her article. She said something like "building bridges is making connections with people who are very different from you." So I invite her to try to build some bridges with me. I don't feel too motivated to build bridges myself, but if she wants to, that's fine with me. I feel more like burning bridges. lol.

I don't like my past. I don't want to go back to it. I want to move forward and create a new future for sensitive teenagers and children. I don't think Geetu is ever going to be much help or even the least bit supportive of my work really, so I'd rather build bridges with someone who I at least see some hope for. On the other hand, I can't predict with certainty how Geetu will feel. Maybe with time she will feel more open and less defensive to the things I've said here.

Which reminds me, Mayer and Salovey said in 1997 that part of EI was: The "ability to stay open to feelings, both those that are pleasant and those that are unpleasant." (source) I wonder if Geetu agrees. I really wonder what she really believes. I suspect it is very hard for her to remain objective since she has income from selling the EQi. No, I'll change that to say, "I think it's impossible for her to remain objective."

Anyhow, while on the topic of openness, I want to note that I don't think openness is so much a function of EI as it is what I'd call ES, or emotional security. If a person is insecure, they are not going to feel very open to criticism, regardless of their EI. Or perhaps the higher their EI the more defensive they will feel and the more quickly they will feel it.

Here Mayer and Salovey confuse innate emotional intelligence with either emotional security or emotional skill or emotional mastery or something else. Or if they don't confuse the terms, they at least don't clarify that openness is a function of more than emotional intelligence, something which I have no doubt that they know. I assume they either didn't want to address that in that particular article or they might have addressed it and I just haven't read the article closely enough. I will just trust that most people reading this know that an insecure person is going to be less open to criticism than a secure one.

Now let me return to Flick. Flick told me last night that her mother has called her a slut, among other things. And my partner Laura's mother called Laura something similar when she found out that Laura had been seen hugging me on the street. I can assure you that Laura is very far from a slut. And I would never call anyone a slut anyhow. But what I mean is that Laura, like Flick, has not had a series of emotionally empty sexual relationships. And anyone who has is simply trying to meet unmet emotional needs, and I would not judge them for that.

So why would mothers call their own daughter's sluts or whores? And if you think I am exaggerating and you want to know if this could be true that a mother could actually do something that cruel, then you could confirm it by talking to some highschool counselors or some teenagers who don't dress and act like the rest of their peers. These kinds of things shocked me when I first started talking to teens, but they don't shock me much now. They motivate me to change things, but they don't shock me.

So why would a mother call her own daughter a slut, a tramp, a whore or a prostitute? And what would this do to a young person's, especially a sensitive young person's self-image and self-esteem? Would it make them feel more secure or more insecure?

Last night I asked Flick if she considered herself sensitive. She said "I don't know but I know I take offence easily." This young person is getting judged at home and at school. In her private school they think it is important what her hair looks like. They judge her based on her looks because they want to keep up the school image. The image is what brings in the money.

So is it any wonder that if Flick is getting called a slut by her mother and getting judged at school both by her teachers and peers (though we can't really call them that if they have vastly different values), she would feel easily hurt by someone judging or criticizing her? Is it any surprise that she might think of death when she lays in bed at night?

One of Flick's favorite sites on the net, by the way, is Vampire Freaks. Somehow I am guessing that Geetu, Flick's mother, classmates, teachers and school authorities wouldn't approve.

But if I were sad and feeling suicidal, I can promise you that I would rather talk to Flick than to any of the above mentioned. Flick, you see, understands the value of a hug. Here is what she said:

I could be wrong but I think most of the people I just listed above would be more likely to give Flick, or me, a lecture than a hug.

Now since all of this writing is finding is home on Geetu's page I will return to Geetu.

One thing more I'd like to say is that I think Geetu is really missing the point of emotional intelligence and what it could mean for the world. Not for the businessworld, but for the world. For the children, for the teens. But I am afraid that Geetu is so heavily invested in the status quo, just by living in England for example, one of the most expensive countries in the world, that she will never see or understand what the possible contribution of the Mayer Salovey four branch model of EI could be to humanity.

This model is very different from the concept of EI that she and Reuven BarOn have been making money from.

I hesitate to give Geetu or anyone else advice, but I will say that if someone wants to make a major difference in the world, I personally believe they have to remove themselves from the status quo for quite some time. I believe they have to remove themselves from whichever culture they were born into. Geetu, like David Caruso, is right in the thick of things in her culture, at least as far as i can tell. I think she is changing very little really, and is failing to question the most basic assumptions about England, business, education and society.

That is why I plan to keep my writing up about Geetu, in spite of her threat to try to force me to take this page down.

And I plan to keep it up for people like Jen and Flick. Who are being damaged daily in the so called schools of England. And who are being told over and over and over that they must study, they must go to college, they must go to uni. And blah, blah, blah.

Update on my old friend Lisa. I checked google and found out she's now working with her father, so I am not sure what good her PhD at Harvard did really. And I see that she is married to a former Air Force captain who has a degree in computer science and a Harvard MBA. lol. This is from her dad's company's website. I hope they can talk about their feelings!