The Perils of Naming and Knowing
In a previous post, I discussed the power of a name. It often seems that by giving an affliction or piece of ourselves a name, it becomes easier to control.
That cloudly feeling, that emptiness in my stomach? That’s anxiety.
Today, I want to explore this a bit. The short story is that I have become more skeptical of it. Namely, it seems to me that this capability of naming can itself be recruited by illness. Worse, though—and almost paradoxically—sometimes giving something a name marks it as beyond our control.
But we’ll get to that in due time. I want to begin with a more conservative point: that this naming faculty of ours can be recruited by illness. What do I mean by this?
Normally, naming coincides with control. I am feeling something, I am not quite sure what it is—but it is bad: my stomach is a pit, I am constantly looking over my shoulder. I might, in a moment of epiphany, come to think of this feeling as anxiety.
Suddenly it is as if all has become clear. I am anxious about my performance, or about a hard conversation that I’ll need to navigate later in the day. And now that I know this feeling as anxiety, I can begin to address it, I can begin to control it. I can take deep breaths, I can ask myself whether this conversation is really worth worrying about.
But, curiously, this is not the only way such an event might unfold. I’ll now tell a somewhat detailed story about a made-up character.
Marcel has just had a love affair gone sideways with Gilberte. Things were going well at first, but their relationship had an implosion after a bitter fight. They have not talked since, and she will not respond to his messages. He is embarrassed. He walks around town quite nervous that he’ll run into her. He looks over his shoulder and avoids the places they used to frequent, as well as those in society whom they mutually knew.
Now, eventually, Marcel will come to name this emotion. He is scared of running into her—perhaps the fight was worse than he remembered—or he is heartbroken, sad, depressed. He might go further: he looks over his shoulder, avoids the places they shared, because he does not want to run into her. He does not like her anymore, he is quite over her, in fact.
He has named his emotion: he avoids her out of resentment, fear, or something like that.
And so he goes on. Time passes: he continues to look over his shoulder, to avoid their old places. When he, by accident, walks by somewhere they used to spend time together, his heart begins racing. He asks himself: “When will I stop being so afraid?”
One day, however, Marcel might realize something. That he is not in fact afraid, but misses Gilberte. He looks over his shoulder not because he is trying to avoid her, but the opposite. He hopes to run into her.
In fact, he has a second epiphany: things have been much more complicated than he once believed. His fear or resentment of her was never fear or resentment, but longing and missing. Yes, he avoided places and people, but this was to keep up the act to himself. To convince himself that he did not miss her. To aid his denial.
And, upon having this epiphany, he will realize that his denial’s greatest ally, its commanding officer, was the very name he himself bestowed upon his behavior, his calling it ‘fear’ or ‘resentment.’
Now, I don’t mean to imply that this is the only way such an emotion will unfold. Perhaps there is another version of Marcel who is perfectly correct in his initial self-assessment. Maybe he does resent Gilberte, and that is fine. All I mean to draw out here is that one vehicle of Marcel’s self-deception, of his denial, is his understanding of his emotion as fear or resentment. The name he bestows, in such a case, is but another tool of illness, of repression, meant to keep him in the dark.
I want to switch gears for a moment and examine a different dynamic. In my previous piece, I wrote that:
“Sometimes, knowledge of ourselves coincides with inaction.”
Sometimes, I argued, self-knowledge of ourselves serves as a basis for deferral. We spend so much time ruminating and venting that we defer and procrastinate doing.
A similar dynamic can arise with the bestowal of a name. That is what I want to explore here.
I am scrolling on TikTok or YouTube Shorts. In doing so, I am avoiding writing my Substack article for the day. I might groan and, in a moment of realization, name my behavior. I know what I am doing: I am procrastinating! I am just scrolling indefinitely to avoid work. OK. Guess I’ll continue.
This is a weird and quick paragraph, but that is on purpose. I think something like this gets very close to the actual experience of deferral in the name of doomscrolling. Namely, we often recognize what it is that we are doing—that we are procrastinating—and then just continue on.
There are two ways we might look at this. The first is the more common one. It goes like this: that we are able to recognize what we are doing—that we are doomscrolling—but, at the same time, find ourselves continuing, signifies how dangerous these apps are. They take control of our brains, our dopamine receptors, all that.
Now, this is fine. But I want to explore a second option.
It is interesting (and at least notable!) that our continued scrolling is so often preceded by an observation of ours: that we are procrastinating, or doing something bad. In the previous example, Marcel’s naming his behavior, as anxious or resentful, enabled his repression and denial. It is at least possible, then, that a similar thing is happening here. That our naming our behavior—as doomscrolling or as procrastination—enables it somehow.
I am not quite sure how this enabling would work. Here is one immediate answer: by naming our behavior as procrastination or doomscrolling, it takes on an existence separate from us. In this sense, the naming acts as a compromise. On the one hand, it allows us to disavow and eject the scrolling. It is not something we want to do: rather, something has come over us. On the other hand, naming it relegates it to the level of a separately existing thing, one we have no control over.
It is almost as if, by naming it, we strip the term ‘doomscrolling’ of any effect that it might have for us. It is not something we are doing, but a description of our behavior, of the affliction we are faced with.
We would be wise to look upon those who say that ‘naming precedes control’ with a bit of skepticism. In the cases that matter most, it often leads to the opposite. Yet, it is also just as true that there are plenty of cases where naming an emotion is incredibly elucidating.
This seems to me a natural ending point, but I am not quite sure how to thread these two ideas together. This is why, at the beginning of the piece, I use the term ‘paradox.’ The very psychic tool that gives us control and awareness of our emotions can serve to, in particular cases, obscure them from our view.