1

Emotional intelligence, empathy and the educative power of

poetry: a Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective

Author: Marc Roberts RMN RNT DipHE BA(Hons) PGCE PGCRM MA PhD

Email: marcwarenroberts@aol.com

Published paper available on request or at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2850.2009.01500.x/abstract

Roberts, M. (2010) Emotional intelligence, empathy and the educative power of poetry: a

Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health

Nursing

17, 236-241.
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Abstract

The concept of emotional intelligence is gaining increasing precedence in the nursing

literature, with particular emphasis placed upon its importance for various aspects of

the nursing profession and the demand for greater attention to be given to its

development in the education of nurses. Accordingly, this paper will seek to

contribute to this emerging body of research by proposing that the employment of

poetry in the education of mental health nurses provides a valuable opportunity for the

development of emotional intelligence and, in particular, the development of one of

the central characteristics of emotional intelligence; namely, empathy. Moreover,

while the nature of the relationship between nursing and the arts is gaining increasing

attention, this paper will focus upon the account of art given by Gilles Deleuze – one

of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century – and his long time

collaborator Felix Guattari. In particular, in order to develop a Deleuzo-Guattarian

account of the educative power of poetry, and the manner in which it provides a

valuable opportunity for the development of emotional intelligence, and of empathy in

particular, this paper will employ their account of the ‘percept’ and the ‘affect’,

introduced in their final collaborative work What is Philosophy?

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Introduction

The concept of emotional intelligence is gaining increasing precedence in the nursing

literature, with particular emphasis being placed upon its importance for various

aspects of the nursing profession along with a demand for greater attention to be given

to its development in the education of nurses (see, e.g. Cadmen & Brewer 2001,

Freshwater 2004, Freshwater & Stickley 2004, Akerjordet & Severinsson 2007,

Hurley 2008). Accordingly, this paper will seek to contribute to this emerging body of

research by proposing that the employment of poetry in the education of mental health

nurses provides a valuable opportunity for the on-going development of emotional

intelligence and, in particular, the development of what is often regarded as one of the

key elements of emotional intelligence; namely, empathy (Goleman 1996). Moreover,

while both the nature and the value of the relationship between the arts and mental

health nursing is gaining increasing attention (see, e.g. Gallagher 2007), this paper

will specifically focus upon the work of Gilles Deleuze, and the theory of the

‘percept’ and the ‘affect’ in particular, in order to develop an account of the educative

power of poetry. Indeed, as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth

century, Deleuze’s individual work - as well as his collaborative work with the radical

psychoanalyst and political activist Felix Guattari - is stimulating an emerging body

of health care research that can rightly be referred to as Deleuzo-Guattarian (see, e.g.

Drummond 2002, 2005, Fox 2002, Holmes & Gastaldo 2004, Holmes et al. 2007,

Roberts 2005a, 2006, 2007). However, in order to develop a Deleuzo-Guattarian

account of the educative power of poetry, and the manner in which it provides a

valuable opportunity for the ongoing development of emotional intelligence, and of

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empathy in particular, this paper will exclusively employ Deleuze and Guattari’s

(2003) final and challenging collaborative work What is Philosophy?

Emotional intelligence

Since its earliest formulations (Mayer et al. 1990, Salovey & Mayer 1990), its

subsequent popularisation (Goleman 1996) and its analysis and employment in the

health care literature, the concept of emotional intelligence - and therefore how it is to

be measured - has remained a matter of discussion and dispute (Hurley 2008). For

example, Mayer et al (2004) suggest that emotional intelligence refers specifically to

a ‘cooperative combination’ between emotion and intelligence, a mutually beneficial

interdependence between an individual’s affective states and their ability to engage in

abstract thought and to learn and adapt to the environment. In particular, they suggest

that emotional intelligence incorporates the ability to perceive and comprehend

emotions, to access emotions in order to facilitate decision making processes and the

ability to critically reflect upon and regulate emotions in order to promote both

emotional and intellectual development (Mayer & Salovey 1997). In contrast, others

have provided a more inclusive conceptualisation of emotional intelligence, a

conceptualisation that incorporates a range of personality traits, social skills and work

related competencies, such as high self-esteem, self-motivation and conflict

management (see, e.g. Goleman 1998, Bar-On 2000). Accordingly, Goleman (1998)

has suggested that emotional intelligence ought to be understood in terms of the ‘the

capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating

ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships’ (p.

317). For Mayer et al. (2004), however, such conceptualisations of emotional

intelligence - conceptualisations that are said to equate emotional intelligence with

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everything from ‘zeal and persistence’ to general ‘character’ - are so broad that they

have ‘little or nothing specifically to do with emotion or intelligence and,

consequently, fail to map onto the term emotional intelligence’ (p. 198).

Despite the ongoing debate concerning the conceptual formulation of

emotional intelligence, what is less contested is the value of emotionally intelligent

individuals to the nursing profession. Indeed, it has been suggested that those with

high levels of emotional intelligence are more likely to be able to cope with the

stresses of the increasingly self-directed nature of nursing education, are better able to

deal with the practical and emotional demands of everyday clinical nursing and are

more likely to ensure effective clinical leadership through the creation of a supportive

environment characterised by innovation and change (Cadmen & Brewer 2001, Evans

& Allen 2002, Montes-Berges & Augusto 2007, Akerjordet & Severinsson 2008).

However, it is the role of emotional intelligence in the formation of caring,

therapeutic relationships that is most often highlighted as being of central importance

to nursing; in particular, it has been suggested that in so far as nursing is to be

understood as a profession that is concerned with attending to both the physical and

the emotional needs of others - of caring about, rather than simply caring for, the

other - then it not only demands practical competence and theoretical knowledge, but

it also necessitates an ability to achieve a significant degree of ‘emotional resonance’,

‘affective attunement’ or empathic understanding of those receiving nursing care

(Akerjordet & Severinsson 2004; McQueen 2004). Accordingly, while empathy can

broadly be understood as the ability to move towards another person’s perspective or

frame of reference, to begin to understand their perceptions and affective states and to

effectively communicate this understanding back to them, then that ability is not only

seen as central for the establishment of a therapeutic relationship - which has been
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referred to as ‘the cornerstone’ of the nursing profession (Reynolds & Scott 1999,

2000) - but is also to be understood as a central characteristic of emotional

intelligence (see, e.g. Goleman 1996, pp. 96-110, 1998, p. 318).

However, despite the importance of emotional intelligence to nursing - and

despite the centrality of empathy, as a central characteristic of emotional intelligence,

to the facilitation of caring, therapeutic relationships - there are suggestions that

nursing education programmes are failing to facilitate its development. As Cadmen &

Brewer (2001) have made clear: ‘The hallmarks of emotional intelligence, empathy in

particular, represent the very fabric of quality in both clinical and academic nursing

but their acquisition during preregistration education programmes is increasingly

compromised’ (p. 323). While they propose a variety of reasons for this, including

increasing student numbers and a lack of ability on the part of nurse lecturers,

Freshwater & Stickley (2004) have persuasively attributed this failure to the manner

in which nursing education, in order to meet statutory competences and professional

standards, has historically been concerned with the teaching of a safe and efficient

performance of practical nursing skills that, more recently, have necessitated the

support of a sound theoretical and evidence base. However, this focus upon the

teaching and assessment of the systematic and efficient performance of technical

procedures, along with the transmission and acquisition of theories and factual

evidence, can be understood as facilitating the development of instrumental

rationality, and the so-called ‘rational mind’ more generally, at the expense of

emotional intelligence and the empathic understanding that is central to the

establishment of caring relationships. Indeed, in highlighting the importance of

emotional resonance and empathic understanding to the awareness of the needs and

the emotions of those receiving nursing care, and in highlighting the dangers to the
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nursing profession of the development of such attributes being neglected, Freshwater

and Stickley (2004) have make it clear that: ‘An education that ignores the value and

development of the emotions is one that denies the very heart of the art of nursing

practice’ (p. 93).

The percept and the affect

In order to reveal how the employment of poetry provides a valuable opportunity to

begin to address the focus upon the rational mind at the expense of emotional

intelligence, and the manner in which it provides a valuable educative opportunity for

the development of emotional intelligence, and of empathy in particular, it is first

necessary to examine Deleuze and Guattari’s account of art. Accordingly, they

suggest that all art is concerned with ‘preserving’, and what it preserves is ‘a bloc of

sensations, that is to say a compound of percepts and affects’ (Deleuze & Guattari

2003, p. 164). Moreover, they go on to suggest that: ‘Percepts are no longer

perceptions; they are independent of a state of those who experience them. Affects are

no longer feelings or affections; they go beyond the strength of those who undergo

them. Sensations, percepts, and affects are beings whose validity lies in themselves

and exceeds any lived’ (Deleuze & Guattari 2003, p. 164). Now, despite the

seemingly enigmatic nature of such pronouncements, Deleuze and Guattari can be

understood as suggesting that a work of art, in its broadest terms, is concerned with

creating perceptions and affections, with the evocation of points of view and affective

states, such that we, as the work of art’s audience, are invited to adopt, experience or

participate in those points of view and affective states. However, by inviting us to

participate in them, it is important to note that the perceptions and affections that the

work of art produces are no longer the exclusive property of, for example, the artist
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that produced them; this is to say that a work of art’s perceptions and affections are,

as it were, ‘dislocatable’ and it is precisely these dislocatable perceptions and

affections - dislocatable from the lived experience of any particular individual and

therefore open for all to experience or to participate in - that Deleuze and Guattari

designate with the technical and unfamiliar terms percept and affect.

In order to further explicate this account of art, however, and in order to

formulate a Deleuzo-Guattarian account of the educative power of poetry in

particular, it is productive to briefly discuss the account of the percept and the affect

in relation to an extract from The Suicide - a short and poignant poem by the twentieth

century poet Louis MacNeice about an anonymous figure who, overwhelmed by the

oppressive and seemingly vacuous nature of his working life, suddenly jumps to his

death from his office window. Accordingly, MacNeice (2007) writes from the

perspective of a third party who, in the moments immediately after the office worker’s

suicide, directs us around the now vacant office and informs us that: ‘There are the

bills / In the intray, the ash in the intray, the grey memoranda stacked / Against him,

the serried ranks of the box-files, the packed / Jury of his unanswered

correspondence / Nodding under the paperweight in the breeze / From the window by

which he left’ (p. 148). Now, Deleuze and Guattari’s account of art, and of the percept

and the affect in particular, suggests that MacNeice does not invite us to attend to

these lines in a disengaged manner, simply acknowledging the contents of the office

with minimal regard to the perceptions of the office worker before his suicide or the

affective states that he underwent. Rather, the lines dislocate the points of view and

affective states from the office worker and invite us, as the poem’s audience, to move

towards the office worker’s frame of reference, to perceive the office as he perceived

it and to experience the affective states that he experienced in the moments before his
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death. In particular, MacNeice’s lines can be understood as dislocating the

perceptions and affections from the office worker - and thereby evoking the percepts

and affects that we may participate in - through the highly creative employment,

common to all poetry, of a variety of sophisticated linguistic techniques, including

metaphor, rhyme, meter, and the manipulation of syntax (see, e.g. Lennard 2005,

Furniss & Bath 2007).

Although the brief extract from The Suicide contains all of these linguistic

techniques, a detailed exposition of MacNeice’s employment of them will not be

carried out here. However, in order to see how MacNeice employs language in order

to evoke points of view and affective states that we may participate in, to see how he

dislocates the perceptions and affections from the office worker and thereby creates

percepts and affects that any reader may experience, it is instructive to briefly

examine MacNeice’s description of the box-files in the office as ‘serried ranks’.

Accordingly, in describing them as such, in creating a metaphorical analogy between

box-files and serried ranks, The Suicide evokes the perceptual and affective qualities

that are associated with serried ranks and transfers them onto the office’s box-files.

This is to say that we are invited to perceive the box files as the anonymous office

worker perceived them in the moments before his suicide, to perceive them in terms

of the order, number, impersonality and impenetrability of an army. Moreover,

MacNeice’s description of the box-files as serried ranks also evokes the affective

connotations of the metaphor, inviting us to participate in the affective relation that

the office worker had towards those box-files before his death, to sense the

powerlessness, intimidation and insignificance that one may feel before ranks of

impenetrable soldiers. Therefore, Deleuze & Guattari’s account of art suggests that it

is through the creative employment of language - understood as the ‘material’ which

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the poet manipulates - that poetry is able to produce dislocated perceptions or percepts

and dislocated affections or affects that we are then able to participate in; indeed, in

stressing the intimate link between the material of the artist and the creation of

percepts and affects, Deleuze & Guattari (2003) make it clear that: ‘Sensation is not

realized in the material without the material passing completely into the sensation,

into the percept or the affect. All the material becomes expressive.’ (pp. 166-7).

Mental health nursing and the educative power of poetry

In so far as the everyday practice of mental health nursing can be understood as being

concerned, to a significant degree, with attending to the emotional needs of others,

and in so far as emotional intelligence, and empathy in particular, is central to the

ability to establish the caring, therapeutic relationships within which this attention to

the emotional needs of others occurs, then the development of the ability to achieve

emotional resonance with, or empathic understanding of, those receiving nursing care

is of paramount importance in the education of mental health nurses. Accordingly,

while the value of the arts in relation to nursing has been discussed from a variety of

theoretical perspectives (see, e.g. Wikstrom 2000, Hunter 2002, Wainwright &

Williams 2005, Biley & Galvin 2007), the Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective developed

here suggests that the employment of poetry in the education of mental health nurses

provides a valuable opportunity for the development of the ability to achieve empathic

understanding of those receiving mental health care. In particular, in so far as poetry

can be understood as a creative endeavour that dislocates the perceptions and the

affections from the poet that may have experienced them, or from the perceptions and

the affections that the poet has fictional characters undergo, then the educative

employment of poetry presents mental health nursing students, and mental health
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professionals more generally, with an opportunity to experience a vast array of

percepts and affects, to participate in a multiplicity of diverse points of view and

affective states. In doing so, poetry can be understood as facilitating the development,

as it were, of a broad perceptual and emotional ‘horizon’ that enables the mental

health professional to enter the clinical area better prepared to begin the complex and

often challenging process of understanding a client’s perceptual and affective states

and effectively communicating this understanding back to the client.

In order to clarify the manner in which poetry can provide a valuable

opportunity to develop a perceptual and affective horizon that facilitates the process

of empathic understanding, it is important to note the complexity of the emotions and

of formulating a concept of them – features that have gained minimal attention in the

health care literature generally (for a notable exception, see Freshwater & Robertson

2002). Indeed, Savage (2004) has suggested that: ‘There is considerable interest about

the role of emotion within nursing and yet, even in an era of evidence-based practice,

there has been little discussion about how emotion can be understood or investigated’

(p. 32). Accordingly, while a detailed analysis of the complexity of the emotions will

not be carried here, it is sufficient to note that beyond the common understanding of

emotions as clearly demarcated subjective states that are simply waiting to be

accessed by another, we often have competing and multi-dimensional perceptual and

affective stances towards a given event such that we may only come to understand

those perceptual and affective stances through an inter-subjective and dialogical

relation with another. As Shotter (1999) has made clear, our thoughts and feelings

‘only become ordered and organised in a moment by moment, back and forth,

formative or developmental process at the boundaries of our being, involving similar

linguistically mediated negotiations as those we conduct in our everyday dialogues

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with others’ (p.83). In view of this more refined conceptualisation of thoughts and

feelings, and of perceptions and affections, the educative employment of poetry can

be understood as presenting mental health professionals with an opportunity to obtain

a broad perceptual and emotional horizon within which to provisionally situate the

perceptual and affective states of clients, and to thereby begin the inter-subjective,

dialogical process of moving towards an empathic understanding of the often complex

states of those receiving mental health care.

In doing so, however, it is important to note that the percepts and the affects

created by poetry are not replacements for the perceptions and affections of those

receiving mental health care. For example, the percepts and the affects present in

MacNeice’s The Suicide - including the sense of powerlessness, insignificance and,

ultimately, the overwhelming sense of meaninglessness in relation to a particular form

of working life – cannot simply be translated or ‘mapped’ onto the perceptual and

affective states of those clients whose working life may be a contributory factor in

their current mental health difficulties. Rather, those percepts and affects are a starting

point that enable a provisional orientation with respect to the client’s frame of

reference, but it is an orientation that is open to revision and refinement as we move

closer towards an empathic understanding of client’s in a open, non-paternalistic

manner, or what has been referred to as a process of ‘reciprocal elucidation’

characterised by collaboration and non-polemical dialogue (see, e,g. Foucault 1991,

Roberts 2004, 2005b). This is to say that in so far as a client may have competing and

multi-dimensional perceptual and affective states, the percepts and affects acquired

through the educative employment of poetry can be offered to the client in order to

move towards an understanding of what their experience might be like, what it might

be metaphorically analogous to. Indeed, in accordance with recent interest in the

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therapeutic use of metaphor (Chan 2004), and the growing consensus ‘that people not

only talk in metaphor’, but that ‘they make sense of their world through metaphor’

(Lawley & Tompkins 2005, p.18), the educative employment of poetry can be

understood as providing a rich linguistic resource, a highly creative and metaphorical

vocabulary, that the mental health professional can draw upon in order to work

towards a collaborative understanding of a client’s perceptual and affective states and

that can be employed to effectively communicate this understanding back to the

client.

Conclusion

In view of the increasing interest in the concept of emotional intelligence in the

nursing literature, its suggested benefits for various aspects of the nursing profession

and the continued demands for greater attention to be given to its development in the

education of nurses, it has been suggested that the employment of poetry in the

education of mental health nurses provides a valuable opportunity for the on-going

development of emotional intelligence, and of empathy in particular. Taking Deleuze

and Guattari’s account of art - and specifically the concept of the percept and the

affect that they developed in their final collaborative work What is Philosophy? - it

has been suggested that poetry, by means of the highly creative employment of a

variety of sophisticated linguistic techniques, dislocates the perceptions and affections

from the lived experience of any particular individual and invites its audience to

participate in those dislocated perceptions or percepts and to experience those

dislocated affections or affects. Accordingly, the educative employment of poetry can

be understood as providing mental health nursing students, and mental health

professionals more generally, with a valuable opportunity to participate in a

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multiplicity of percepts and affects, a vast array of diverse points of view and

affective states, that enables the mental health professional to enter the clinical area

better prepared to begin the complex and often challenging process of moving

towards an empathic understanding of clients. In particular, it is by participating in a

multiplicity of diverse points of view and affective states that the mental health

professional is able to develop a broad perceptual and emotional horizon within which

to situate - and to begin the collaborative process of moving towards a clarification,

and an empathic understanding of - the often complex and multi-dimensional

perceptual and affective states of those receiving mental health care.

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