Sensitivity and Fragility

In The New Leviathan Collingwood argues that a person "liberates himself from a particular desire by naming it; not giving it any name that comes at haphazard into his head, but giving it its right name, the name it really has in the language he really talks" (13.42).

I remember that I found this idea hard to swallow. How can naming a feeling or desire free us from that desire? Especially given man's unique relationship with language, how can we be sure that in attempting to name a problem we are not actually creating that problem? This is certainly a question Foucault or Roger Smith would ask.

Yet, my own experience is starting to confirm Collingwood's claim. I believe that I have been able to properly name one of my tendencies. I've often spoken of my sensitivity, of my capacity for strong and intense emotions and thoughts.

But sensitivity isn't the problem.

Fragility is the problem. I can't handle the intensity of my thoughts and emotions.

But what is this 'I' that is separate from my thoughts and feelings? A rawer consciousness? I'm not sure.

Either way, I'm trying to reflect on this new name I have for my tendencies. I need to reflect on it.

I need to ask, why couldn't my emotions have a proper name? Why couldn't there be a rhyme or reason to my thoughts and emotions that has a proper name? Why, as Heidegger asks, am I tempted to "understate the nature of the thing," tainting my observations of myself with the fear that they were merely "afterward read into it" (Building Dwelling Thinking, in Poetry, Language, Thought, 151). Why do I doubt that some labels/narratives are better than others?

Because there are indeed labels and narratives that arrive closer at my emotions, closer to truth. I'm working on finding some of those. Life is confusing, man.