Too much analysis can confuse people about how they really feel. There are severe limits to what we can discover through self-reflection, and trying to explain the unexplainable does not lead to a sudden parting of the seas with our hidden thoughts and feelings revealed like flopping fish.
That’s psychologist, professor and author Timothy Wilson’s conclusion in Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright (New York Times, December 29). I especially like the following reference:
Self-contemplation is a curse / That makes an old confusion worse.~ Theodore Roethke