Citation
Orbach, S. (2000), "Towards Emotional Literacy", Health Education, Vol. 100 No. 6, pp. 269-270. https://doi.org/10.1108/he.2000.100.6.269.2
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Emotional intelligence is beginning to be recognised as being even more important than cognitive and intellectual intelligence to our mental and physical health, our career success and our personal happiness. The accompanying concept of “emotional literacy”, once ridiculed as a US fad, is fast gaining ground, but many more use it than know what it means in practice.
Susie Orbach, practising psychotherapist, is probably the best‐known UK guru on this issue. She has campaigned tirelessly for the importance of validating emotion in private and public life, on the basis that it is only once we recognise what we are feeling that we can use it rather than let it overwhelm our thinking. In this collection of pieces, first published in The Guardian, she explores emotional literacy through practical and real life examples, many of them drawn from work with children and young people in the home and in the school. The book is full of gems of insight that every teacher, health professional and parent will find illuminating. Through all her examples runs a consistently and convincing argument for more understanding and empathy and less judgementalism. For example, the furious embarrassment of the teenager at the real or imagined public gaffs of the adult are explored as an integral part of the maturational process of forming your own identity. Her goal is to remind all of us that we are part of the same human family, each with a dark as well as a light side. If we are to start to prevent and not just punish the extreme horrors of violence, sadism, and paedophilia, as well as alleviate the less flamboyent but painful everyday problems of shame, depression and betrayal, we need to understand the person and their impulses as well as condemning their behaviour. It is a not an easy book, as it challenges some deeply held moral reflexes and preconceptions, but it is a wise and timely one.