What "talking about your feelings" means philosophically

A long time ago, I saw a YouTube video of a comedy sketch wherein a group of construction workers are trying to cat-call women walking by. But one of the workers, Todd, doesn't seem to understand how to "properly" cat-call. Instead of the customary sexually objectifying comments, Todd compliments the women on their hair or purse, which seems to prove more "effective" than the other workers' cat-calls (I'll leave what "effective" means here for you to figure out--or just watch the damn video yourself). One of the last things Todd says to one of these women (as he's swept away by her) is "Tell me about your feelings."

This is just one example of a joke often made about men that, unlike women, they seem to have trouble "talking about their feelings." The reason for this I think I'll leave for a later post. But "talking about one's feelings" is usually said to help by allowing one to "process" one’s emotions. But what does that mean? How is it supposed to be helpful? I thought it might be fitting to discuss this topic given the "journalistic" nature of this blog since journals, diaries, etc. are at least partly meant to do the aforementioned things by giving a sort of verbal expression to one’s emotions, regardless of whether one is a man or a woman. 

So how might giving such verbal expression to emotions be helpful? Answers to this and the foregoing questions, and even the questions themselves, never really arose in my mind until I encountered an article by Sean Collins in The Aquinas Review (available here). Collins's aim is to investigate the nature of language or speech in light of the penchant of analytic philosophers to replace many of their words with various symbols, effectively turning their argument into something that looks like a mathematical function or equation. (Some might object here that this characterization is too crude. But come on, just look at it.) Collins makes a lot of interesting points in the article, but there's one that I find myself constantly returning to.

Collins observes that in Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, Aquinas describes the four ways order relates to the mind:

"It is proper [to reason] to know order. For although the sensitive powers know some things absolutely, nevertheless to know the order of one thing to another belongs to intellect or reason. … But order relates to reason in four ways. For there is a certain order which reason does not make but only considers. … Another is the order which reason, in considering, makes in its proper act. … Third is the order which reason, in considering, makes in the operations of the will. Fourth is the order which reason, in considering, makes in exterior things, of which it is itself the cause" (Commentary on the Ethics, I.1, my translation).

The poignantly important bit here is Aquinas's claim that it belongs to reason to know order--but how reason sees order has to do with reason’s relation to reality. We can see this expressed in language. Take the following three sentences:

Socrates is still alive.

Oh, would that Socrates might still be alive!

I wish that Socrates were still alive.

In the first sentence, we see the first order expressed, namely, the order which reason only considers. This sentence expresses reason’s fundamental relation to reality, that of simple apprehension. Here, reason is not actively engaged in manipulating what is before it but rather receptively considers it. It notices something about reality—a certain order outside of itself. In the second sentence, however, we see the third order expressed, i.e. the order which, in considering, reason makes in the acts of the will. Here, reason notices the same reality expressed in the first sentence but in a significantly different way. For in the second sentence, what is expressed is not the reality itself (that Socrates is still alive) but rather the mind’s inclination or desire towards that reality. Both the first and second sentences are about Socrates’s being alive, but in the first sentence, that reality is being apprehended or known or cognized, whereas in the second sentence it is being longed for, and it is the longing itself which is being expressed in the second sentence without it being what is considered, properly speaking. In the first sentence, the reality is the object of apprehension, whereas in the second sentence it is not. What differentiates the first and second sentences is the mode of expression. Yet upon a certain self-reflection, reason can even make the inclination itself the object of apprehension, which is expressed in the third sentence. In the third sentence, the mind’s own inclination has become the reality which it apprehends.

One should note here that the second "ethical" order is in fact subordinated to the first, to the apprehension of the real, for it cannot be understood without the first order. Moreover, with respect to the ethical order’s subordination to the apprehensive order, "the order of what is apprehended also demands that some things ought to be done" (Collins, pg. 69).

Turning our attention to the second order of the mind noted by Aquinas, i.e. that which reason considers in its own act, it was at one point understood to be the subject of logic—hence, the logical order. What is important to understand about this order is that it exists only in the mind. We can see this in the following sentence: “Socrates is a man.” This sentence has a subject, and it has a predicate; however, the sentence is not about the subject and the predicate as subject and predicate, but it uses the subject-predicate relation, a logical relation, "for the purpose of saying something about something" (Collins, pg. 66). Logical relations, therefore, and thus the logical order understood in this way, are entirely in service to the consideration of reality while not themselves being the object of consideration (except perhaps per accidens upon an act of self-reflection).

Finally, the fourth "artificial" order, i.e. that which reason makes in exterior things, is distinct from the others in that it does not have its own linguistic expression. Of course, we can easily speak of the things we make, but in doing so we find ourselves back in the first order, our artifacts now being the realities which we apprehend. Unlike the other three orders, the artificial order does not necessarily follow what is simply apprehended because it "has its existence from arbitrary human invention—which, by way of an important corollary, is to say that it exists only according to a certain analogy" (Collins, 70). For this reason, as Collins says, the artificial order has no verbal counterpart, properly speaking; there is no apprehension of the real, properly speaking, of the way things are, in the artificial order, but rather it is the mind’s inventively constructive ordering of things. As such, there is nothing to express verbally in the artificial order until after we have made something to be talked about. But there is no linguistic component to express reason’s very act of making. 

The bottom line is that if there is to be any speech or language, there must first be something real which the mind apprehends and considers. But as we’ve seen, words express not only mental content or thoughts, which are themselves certain reflections of the real, but also mental order, which is modeled on the relation of the mind to the real. Consequently, language and speech presuppose reality.

The point from these observations is to show that "words are signs of thoughts (intellectuum), and thoughts are the likeness of things. Thus it is clear that words refer to things signified through the medium of the conception of the intellect. Therefore, insofar as something can be known by our intellect, it can be named by us" (Summa Theologiae, I.13.1, my translation). That is to say, it is the function of speech and language to give expression to the mind’s apprehension of the real, to thoughts. The sentences above show how those different expressions manifest themselves. 

However, as one may be able to tell, the reality which the mind apprehends, and accordingly expresses in words, can be just about anything (as long as it's real in some sense or other), including other operations of the soul, like emotions. That is to say, we can have thoughts (which are expressed in words) about anything, including the interior operations of our own souls. When we take something like emotions or feelings, which are of the lower part of the soul, the non-rational part (since emotions can "pop up" from seemingly nowhere without any act of the will [even though the will can command the emotions at times]) and speak or write about them, we “raise them up,” as it were, into the higher part of the soul by reflecting upon them and forming thoughts about them. To be clear, this is not to say that we sort of really transform the very emotions themselves into thoughts, any more than thinking about the table in front of me literally transforms the table into my thought about it. 

(Granted, as Aquinas says, thoughts share a certain likeness to the reality which they reflect, i.e. they share a form, though the form of the table in my mind is an intelligible form whereas the form of the table in front of me is a real form. So we might say that my thinking about the table in front of me trans-forms the table in front of me into a thought of mine in an analogous sense by conceptualizing it; but the table in front of me and my thought about it remain distinct.)

Nevertheless, once we say something about our emotions, that presupposes some underlying thought which the words signify, the emotions now being the object of our intellect as something thought about, bringing a certain order to them.

How might this be good for us? Again, it belongs to reason to know order. However, it is natural to man to possess reason. Hence, it naturally belongs to man to know order. Furthermore, it is good for us to do things according to our nature. Therefore, it is good for us to order things, including our emotions, which we do by thinking about them and, consequently, talking about them. For when we speak or write, i.e. give verbal expression to some thought, we are, in a sense, forcing ourselves to give order to the things within our souls because, again, words signify thoughts, and forming thoughts about things gives a certain order to them. Consequently, once those things are ordered and "organized," they become a little easier to understand because we can "see" them a little more clearly. 

This might explain why, before they know how to express themselves in words, children are only able to "process" their feelings by partaking in activities like drawing or playing--activities which, at least for them at the time, do not require thought in the same way that writing or speaking does. For the latter demand from children a higher functioning mental capacity of which they are not yet capable since performing them properly presupposes and thus requires a capacity to apprehend reality coherently. In fact, if someone were to try to ask them to try to explain how they were feeling, I would not doubt that they would have much difficulty in doing so. (Just try having an adequately intelligent conversation with a child who has just started to learn how to speak. Even the suggestion is a little ridiculous.) But as they grow and develop, learning more about the world and reality, and more importantly how to think (more or less) properly, things like journaling will be more helpful to them because they are able to form more complete thoughts; apprehending reality is less problematic for them (supposedly). Moreover, if they grow and develop even further, becoming more familiar with the conventions of the language they use, it will become easier for them to give expression to more complex thoughts, and activities like journaling will probably become even more useful to them.

This is not to say, however, that, simply by being spoken or written down, every word is a sign of thoughts which are ordered well, or that everyone, simply by speaking or writing, orders his thoughts perfectly. A person may be a chatterbox and/or write a plethora of things and still make a multitude of intellectual mistakes. But thoughts do attain a certain perfection by being verbally expressed in the sense that they are brought into the world, into another order or sort of existence, by words; but the thoughts themselves, even as verbally expressed, may be bad ones or involved in bad reasoning.

This is all also indicative of another, more profound point. For, in the Aristotelian-Thomistic terminology, God is the ultimate cause of all existence, which is to say he is that which brings things from potency into act, from being what could be to be. But potentiality as such is essentially indeterminate and open-ended; it is by its very definition formless, chaotic, lacking any definitive order. Hence, God, in his act of creation, brings order to the universe. To bring order to anything is a characteristic primarily of the divine. Thus, we may say that so too man, by his rational faculties, reflects the divine in his acts of ordering that which by itself is inordinate. It is especially reflective of the divine when he does this by words since, as it is said, God brought about the universe, the order of the real, by His Word.

By bringing order, then, to our otherwise inordinate feelings or emotions--which, again, by themselves can spring up beyond the control of one's reason--by, say, journaling or talking to a counselor or something--we, in a way, manifest what is supernatural in us, what is God-like. Again, to be clear, I am not saying that every word, written or spoken, is divine or divinely inspired or any such thing. What I am saying is that the very act of ordering things as such is a reflection of the divine, and when we speak or write about our emotions, we are forcing ourselves to form thoughts about them since words are signs of thoughts, and forming thoughts about them is to give a certain order to them which they naturally would have lacked.

I would also like to be clear that I do not think drawing is sort of inherently childish and not as orderly as words. Visual art, when done well, shows a certain order of things as well and, in fact, in a way similar to words. But I don't think I want to get into that now. Maybe I'll save it for another post.