Intelligent people and emotions!

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Finally, someone who thinks the way I do! I know a guy with the mental age of a 7 year old (not Downs, another LD) but he is the most emotionally intelligent person you could come across! Sometimes I have been crying and stopped when he came in the room and he immediately asks 'Why you crying?' and if I say I haven't he would say 'You sad' then give you a hug!

In my case I am very emotional, but often can't figure out what the emotion is. My IQ is average with significant peaks and troughs. Psychopaths are a good example of people who are intelligent but not emotionally so. I read about a group of psychopaths who were taught about emotion. The doctors thought they were cured, so released them from prison. All of the psychopaths went on to use their new found knowledge to emotionally manipulate people!

I'd say that's largely an ill-informed observation. The majority of people I know/have known who are highly intelligent (both academically perfectionistic, and/or highly creative and ingenious) suffer from depression and anxiety. Seeing as depression and anxiety are classed as mental health conditions (I suppose only in their severe form) then what the psychologist said would be untrue. I think that highly intelligent people are more likely to be analytical and self-reflective, which are probably pre-cursors to both depression and anxiety.

I tend to think that highly intelligent people are less prone to developing conditions where their rationality appears to dissolve (I'm talking severe psychosis here). Although of course there are always anomalies and exceptions.

They're not, anyone is prone to extreme emotional pain. How we show that pain and the amount of denial we have over it may change from person to person. Intelligence is a very loose term.