Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people, their intentions, motives and feelings, and to work well with them; intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to understand oneself and use that understanding to run one’s own life. The psychologist Howard Gardner called them the two personal intelligences. Both are central to Therapeutic Shamanism: healthy relationships held hunter-gatherer tribes together, and the depth of anyone’s shamanic work depends on how well they know their own patterns, because what they do not know about themselves they carry into their journeys.
What are interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence? #
Two of the seven intelligences Gardner set out in Frames of Mind in 1983, which he called the personal intelligences. Interpersonal intelligence is a person’s capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people and so to work effectively with them; salespeople, teachers, clinicians, religious leaders, political leaders and actors all need it. Intrapersonal intelligence is the capacity to understand oneself, “to have an effective working model of oneself”, including one’s own desires, fears and capacities, and “to use such information effectively in regulating one’s own life.”1
Gardner sees interpersonal intelligence as having a long evolutionary history, and intrapersonal intelligence as more recent, perhaps arising with human consciousness. He first stressed its roots in a person’s emotional life, and later its role in the big decisions of a life. Gardner describes emotional intelligence as roughly an amalgam of the two personal intelligences, and finds that Daniel Goleman’s account of it, as knowledge and control of emotions and sensitivity to one’s own and others’ feelings, fits comfortably with them.2 See What is emotional intelligence?
Where does the shaman come in? #
Gardner himself brings the shaman in. In arguing that intelligences should be looked at across cultures, he gives the example that “both the clinician in American culture and the shaman in a tribal culture are using their interpersonal intelligences but in different ways and for somewhat different ends.”3
In Therapeutic Shamanism, getting on with others was a matter of survival. Hunter-gatherer tribes were small, lived hand to mouth amongst dangerous animals, and had little privacy. To survive, a tribe had to be a high-functioning team in which people got on, trusted each other and had each other’s backs; a tribe riven by strife, factions and resentments would not have lasted. That is why sharing fairly, enhancing social cohesion and being inclusive were not just nice qualities but part of what it meant to be an Adult.4 The qualities of a True AdultTrue Adult. Not someone with a job and a mortgage, but a person shocked out of childish separateness who has taken up their place, interdependently, in both the human tribe and the more-than-human web. Adults decide; Elders advise. Read the full answer include a good degree of self-awareness, being open to feedback, setting healthy boundaries, being congruent, being in touch with one’s feelings, and being empathic and compassionate: the two personal intelligences, woven together.5 See What does it mean to become a true Adult?
Why does intrapersonal intelligence matter so much in shamanic work? #
Because whatever people do not know about themselves, they take with them into their journeys. Part of hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer, stepping aside so that the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this can lead, is being aware of one’s own relationship patterns and history, since the way someone relates to people tends to shape the way they relate to their Guides. Someone who is frightened of commitment may struggle to commit to their Guides and trust them; someone who feels undeserving of love may not let the Guides’ love in; someone who finds it hard to ask for help may struggle to ask for healing; someone who likes to be in control may find it hard to let the Guides lead. These patterns usually go back to childhood and take time to change.6 See What is hollowing-out?
There is no such thing as a journey free of preconceptions, because a journey is a co-creation, and the journeyer has to bring something for anything to happen at all. So the aim is not to bring nothing but to be as aware as possible of what is brought. That is what shamans mean by ‘stalking’ oneself: watching one’s own thoughts, assumptions and beliefs so as not to mistake them for what is really there.7 The depth to which someone can hollow out sets the depth of their journeying, which makes intrapersonal intelligence one of the foundations of the whole practice. See What is the Inner Tribe?
Are humans better at these than other beings? #
Gardner suggests that intrapersonal intelligence may belong to humans alone.8 Therapeutic Shamanism is not so sure. Running a widened list of intelligences across the Animal, Plant and Stone People, interpersonal intelligence matters only to social animals, so using it as a measure assumes that being social is cleverer than being solitary. And humans are a mixed bag at it: capable of deep relationships and extraordinary cooperation, and also extraordinarily violent and argumentative towards each other. Some people are very good at it and others have almost none. Wolves or a pride of lions, judging humans, might well conclude that we are not very bright at living as a pack.
Intrapersonal intelligence is harder still to measure in other beings, and any measure would have to fit what is meaningful for them, not what humans think is the right way to process feelings and learn from experience. There is no meaningful evidence that humans are ahead on it. Even if humans do go in for inner voices and inner dialogue more than others, it is an open question whether that makes us more intelligent or is a kind of flaw. Valuing it so highly is itself a human bias. See What is the myth of human supremacy? and Do animals think and feel?
Do these intelligences reach beyond humans? #
In animism, relationship does not stop at the human. The other-than-human Peoples are persons to be in relationship with, and much of shamanic practice is about building relationships with a Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer and other Guides. Empathy itself is embodied and visceral. Most people can learn it, though it comes less from learning a skill than from opening up and reconnecting, after which empathy follows; and to regain it deeply means going beyond the human and reconnecting with the more-than-human world too.9 See How do humans communicate and build relationships with the other-than-human Peoples?
Gardner adds a caution that applies here as everywhere: no intelligence is moral in itself. Gandhi and Machiavelli both understood other people well; one encouraged empathy, the other manipulation.10 Understanding people is a skill, and what it is used for is a matter of values.
