Projection, Narcissism and Reality.

The current media presentations concerning the war in the Ukraine, brought to my mind the media in the Arab world, several decades ago, and how it reported on the conflict with Israel then. It hit me in the guts: how could people know -and pretend that they do not know-that they are exposed to such a bunch  of lies and  hang on to it ‘as if they wanted the media to communicate  what they wanted to hear and not what they should know’? Few years later than the Egyptian Media sugar coating facts about the Egyptian\Israeli conflict I found the answer in a Freudian quote: “ ‘in projection’ an internal perception is suppressed, and , instead, its content, after undergoing a certain kind of distortion, enters consciousness in the form of an external perception. In delusions of persecution the distortion consists in a transformation of affect; what should have been felt internally as love is perceived externally as hate”(Freud, SE. Vol. X11, P.66). This remark that was made in 1911 depicted the psychodynamics of the media in the middle east then, and it still does today about the war in the Ukraine: lying to people and using projection to distort reality to the detriment of the Ukrainians more than their supporters. On the one hand the media shows the Russians as ‘whatever’ to allow projection to perceive something in them as inhumane and criminal, as in the same news they glorify the Ukrainian successes against that enemy. So, projection in the media is baffling: hate them or pity them; but which is the right feeling to engender!

There is another different aspect of “projection” that is likely to be missed if not mentioned. A dream is the projection of a wish on a dream screen creating the scene which we remember after the end of the sleep. Projection in that sense is changing a wish into an event. Putting those two points to gathered we find something about projection that explains several psychoanalytic issues (concepts like transference which without acting it out in a relationship with the analyst will-at best- remain a memory). I chose the issue of the internal vs. the external as the two major elements in projection. The internal (the intrapsychic) is always unconscious but -as Freud said- to enter consciousness it has to take the form of a perception, i.e., get projected and conceived of as if it is an externally created matter, i.e., reality.  In its way to consciousness, after being exteriorized, its credibility is rarely questioned. In dreaming we never wake up from a dream questioning its credibility but only after interpreting it we get a chance to question the wish (Freud in the Erma’s dream might have said: I cannot believe that I am such an arrogant person).

Projection is a psychodynamic mechanism that turns an internal condition into a perception or a conception that occupies consciousness as ‘reality’. That new real that replaces the external reality, which is frustrating, is turned into a  wish: I wish the Ukrainians teach the Russians a lesson despite the implausibility of that wish. It does not need an expert to know that the difference in all the elements of military power between Russia and the Ukraine is beyond a naïve comparison. Yet, a smug gesture, in the West, by the incompetent and self-serving politicians, advocates getting “more weapons” to solve the problem of an obvious uneven war: more weapons for the Ukraine to end the war or to keep it going longer till they win? A psychotic plea no doubt that reflects two contradictory projections: win by getting more weapons as if the problem is disparity in effectiveness, when the original situation was the Ukraine's need for protection. 

The media is trying to balance two objectives: depict the Ukrainians as the miserable weak side that is attacked by a mighty power, but at the same time the strong able side that Russia is two weak to defeat. This attitude is domed to create a disastrous confusion: there is no way to talk about the Ukrainians in that impasse without admitting that  War was imposed on then not from the enemy but from the friends. They are involved in this unequal and useless war by the same force that is supposed to protect them, NATO. So, there are two subjects for projection: NATO the cause of the catastrophe and NATO the solution for the war.  The first projection is of the nation that wants and deserves joining the Elite of the world (Western Europe). The other projection is of a nation that is too humble to join the other class of neighbors: two realities and two fantasies that are supposed to create one and the same projection. This is not just a difficult task for one and the same projection to introduce to consciousness; it is a contradiction in its Narcissistic core: ‘we are good enough to be in the European Union but also not good enough to be protected by NATO. In both cases the narcissistic dilemma has no apparent solution. To deserve joining the prestigious status of a European Country  is for sure not in the reality of any possible current Projection. The Ukrainian country has to be European enough to join the private club of NATO but has to be member of the NATO club first to be European enough. So!!!! We are dealing with Political Narcissism in its old European philosophy of manipulating it huge empires just less than seventy years ago

Political Narcissism.

If there is something to call political narcissism it will be conveyed in the psychology of some political leaders who sound as if they are just expressing the wish-of-the people. The fact of the matter-as many historical events from the time of  Alexander the great to Adolf Hitler-is that political leaders create in their people narcissistic needs, or an external aspiration that is transformed into an internal demand that cannot but submit to. Mind you, this could only succeed if the individuals have nothing to project (exteriorize) and gives them a sense of psychological life. After the first World war the German had a psychological life that corresponded to his social life, i.e.,  nothing to project and exteriorize. The Nazi movement revived some old aspirations and people started to feel psychologically alive again. Narcissism, personal and social, becomes a new compass of comparisons and feeds on comparisons with other nations and the politicians exploit it to give themselves a sense of being needed.

Since the end of the last war there were some limited and short wars that exploited the results of the previous World war. But lately (last 10-15 years) the narcissistic map reflected more political maturity and the division of Communism vs. Capitalism started to disappear. Political narcissism began to lose impetus. That was a problem for politicians in countries that breathed political narcissism for the last few centuries. The USA was not the…anymore. Europe lost the distinctions between its eastern and western cultures. Asia has four great cultural entities (Political narcissistic formations), so does  Africa and south America. The old masters are no more ‘above’ others.

What happened lately in the Ukraine is a pathetic attempt by few silly quasi-politicians of the old civilized, free, democratic, developed, etc. societies trying to maintain their political narcissistic delusions. They,   wanted to divide Europe once again into NATO\WARSAW Pacts. Few Minutes ago (April 21) President  Biden gave a speech as the leader of the pact of the free nations regarding rebuilding the Ukraine. Maybe because of his age or the bad company he keeps he forgot that Russia is freer from political narcissism, thus less stupid than many others.

A.   Narcissism and Aggression:

Aggression, like hate is basic in the psychology of the human subject. The immediate thing to mention in that regard is that narcissism is routed in the duality of I (internal, subjective, imagined, etc.) and Me the objective (External, Object, out there, etc.). The stability and reality of the subjective I is in the proofs and proves of its existence. Thus, narcissism is a field of an I that is always in  danger of annihilation if there is no solid well established me to support its presence. I think it is clear that narcissism is one aspect of the psychological life of the subject were a great deal of anxiety and aggression could be instigated. It is also a psychological condition that depends heavily on projection because projection is the natural screen on which the subject reflects his I .

What is happening now in the Ukraine is two (maybe more) narcissistic junior European politicians let their narcissism project a sense of omnipotence that blinded them of the fact that Putin is not a politician but a trained administrator of  a very serious job which requires practical viewpoints to work. Moreover, the West, Civilized, Free, Democratic and the old Natural ruler of the world is now one of four or five groups of countries that share with it the same globe. So, those two technocrats and  without consultation- ignored that their narcissism has led them astray. Ukraine now is bearing the outcome of those two inexperienced  political functionaries. I am very leery that the present situation will result in something good or bad. But maybe it is a wakeup call. 

War is an act of aggression, facing aggression with aggression never create piece. The present notion of arming the Ukraine to face Russia could be called many things but the most descriptive of it is psychotic. Because projection reveals repressed consciousness the consciousness that is not a product of a process of projection should be examined because it could be simply a psychotic sate of mind.  Hitler's statements were not megalomania or projection of frustrations. They were genuine conscious beliefs, i.e., they were ideas and not projections of ideas.  We should examine the calls for arming the Ukrainians to war with Russia to make sure that they are not psychotic ideas.

 Narcissism, Hate, and Aggression:

            Psychoanalysts as mental health professionals are oriented toward judging psychical manifestations in terms of psychopathology, first. Freud’s identification of narcissism in several psychological events (SE, Vol 14, 19140 , and also because he knew its implication from the start, he included it in the ledger of psychopathology. It was first thought of as a withdrawal of the libido from the external world (objects) and reinvesting it in the ego (the subject) where he was supposed to have been its origin. Then, it was seen as investment of the libido in only objects that are  similar or made to be similar to the ego. A third modification was the basis of object relations theory which came much later as a reaction to the Ego psychology. But in all cases, narcissism implied and stated the duality of the human subject: awareness of the world\awareness of the self, thinking\thinking of that thinking, being\being the being that is identified: the split between self and its signifiers was (almost unconsciously) Freud’s intuition of Narcissism as the precondition of the psychical life of the human subject.

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            Lately, something unethical, if not criminal, is happening in the Ukrainian  situation. It started by some politicians (two in particular) suggesting for people who were safe, prosperous, and content in their country that they should get membership in The European Union. Getting that membership demand requesting to  join NATO. The Ukrainians were not told about the risk and the complications that would come with that membership. This membership would constitute a threat to the safety of Russia. Thus, Russian moved some army near the border and threatened that membership in NATO we be resisted by Russia. This crime is not mentioned in the media of the west; on the contrary the media is now promoting continuing and expanding the war and encouraging the request for more Weapons, Weapons, Weapons. Ukraine that has a small army (does  not need and could not have had a larger had an army), is encouraged now to wage war against Russia under the slogans of patriotism, principles, and honor. Those slogans promoted by some members of NATO are exploiting narcissistic sentiments in immoral, foolish, etc. ways to keep a peaceful and unwary nation in a state of ignorance and absence of political malice, and self-deception. Ukraine has no chance to win a war against Russia even with the best patriotic army it could build, but the devious way of keep the Ukrainians feeling humiliated is giving the West a chance to defeat Russia without war. After fifty years away from media that is paid to lie, I find myself living that humiliation again, here in North America. But this time by leading people blindly to their misery.

            Mixing patriotism with honor, courage, and with making comparisons of no substantive basis to the threat of being abused or cheated could take hold of any groups’ minds. When Mussolini made comparison between Italy and other European countries that had Imperial colonies in Africa, he motivated his prosperous Italy to get equal to France and Britain. The result was a disaster in trying to subjugate Ethiopia and Libya. His  attempt at creating Italian Narcissism of false comparisons backfired. Narcissism for the individual is his pot of misery, and for nations is the pot of criminality and disaster. We should really question the mental condition or the moral standards of the European leaders, along with the emotional balance of the Ukrainian excitable politician. They look at the other European countries with envy that is stemming from a sick narcissistic immature Western Political conviction of superiority. One of the most popular and also revealing items in Western media is of a young woman who is crying because she lost a job, a nice place she was living, and left her country to become a refugee for “a president whom she does not know what he wanted”…..yes because she hasn’t been told what why the war of the narcissism some political adolecents. Maybe she would have said yes, I do not want the narcissistic membership in NATO to pay for by all those losses and miseries that transpired.

            There are some serious psychological issues that are distorting mental functions -of ordinary people- to cover up the original mistakes of misleading them into the present predicament. The persons who created this political tragedy did that for personal reasons and the media is not exposing that fact. I have no other means to understanding this political crime but by only resorting to examining the link between narcissism, hate, and aggression.

A Word on Narcissism:

            Psychoanalytically speaking, discovering narcissism in 1914 is astonishing. Narcissism in Freud’s time and many years later was an issue of  an arrested process of development or regression to an earlier point of development. In other words, narcissism in traditional psychoanalysis is an earlier point in a process of evolution. But that did not and does not conceal the fact that narcissism-in core- is a psychical structure that exists and is subject to possible defects and inadequacies as well as great achievements. Narcissism is also a very  successful metaphor of the subject’s (I, you, and him) need and must have a reflection of his being to contain and initiate his psychical life. The subject needs to see himself reflected in external manifestations outside of his-self  (social, relations, achievements, outcomes of his endeavors, etc. as mirrors reflecting his identity). Those are the surface of the lake that reflected back to Narcissus his image. However, I still puzzle to how Freud got the notion of the duality of the subject while he was still thinking in terms of the Libido as issue in narcissism. I tend to believe that his intuition came from a preconscious state of mind that narcissism was not something to fight and make disappear but is in itself a mirror of the psyche of the subject. My narcissism says things about me, as the narcissism of Ursula von der Leben says something about her.

            In 1968 I published a book in Arabic entitled ( The Psychosocial Phenomena). The main idea of the book at that time was that the sequence and course of development in the individual (orality, anality, sexuality… very popular then) takes the reverse direction of the evolution the social order of humanity (Family and incest, then Tribes and war , Socialization, and civility). The idea that comes to me recently is that the conflict between Russia’s concerns regarding its security (basic) interferes with the European concerns about its narcissism (the superiority of the Western  races).There is an interesting  offshoot of that issue which will bring into focus this question: does the political issue overrides the psychology of the politician or is it the opposite when the psychology of the politician overrides the political issue??

            This is not a trivial question. The war in the Ukraine  was initiated by the whims of a personal idiosyncrasy [the irresponsible suggestion of Mr. Stoltenberg, the General Director of NATO to give the Ukraine a membership without consulting the membership states of the treaty]. The dysfunctional link between politics and the psychology (psychopathology) of the politicians in the European Union in dangerously is deciding the present risky political conflict. The significance of that condition is magnified in the media by a deliberate effort to camouflage the serious breach of NATO treaty by lies and exaggerations. I lived to see after fifty years in North America the same unethical  manipulation of truth in the media that plagued the Middle East.

Narcissism, Hate, and Aggression:

            In the previous post I emphasized the functional link between those three-condition saying: ‘hate is an intriguing feeling because it could emerge and take hold of the subject’s mind without obvious causes; and then drives that subject to discover or find out reasons for its existence. It is almost a state of mind that occurs before the subject makes the effort to justify its presence. Hate is a basic element in the person’s sense of being and identity, i.e., the subject defining himself by his relation to the object-s. This inherent link with the object via love\hate  is very much of a narcissistic core. As I previously mentioned I believe the social and the individual phenomena are like mirror images: identical but the reverse of each other. An individual tries to hide his narcissism as much as he can (not to be named as Narcissistic) while a group would like to advertise its narcissism as loud as possible to be recognized as much as it could. So, in every relationship, especially[aF1]  between humans, there is degree of narcissism and of love\hate. The current political conflict in Europe is a great prospect for examining my hypothesis. Russia’s behavior and actions  hurt the west’s narcissism. Hate messages in the media is a very natural response to hurting European narcissism. But wars cannot be won by hate alone; you need to build love for you so people could love you and hate the other. However, hating the Russians is easy to trigger and maintain but loving the Ukraine is a difficult task. The Ukraine issue was created to be used as a cause that could stimulate some European narcissistic ambitions. Europe needed that since Russia, the old nemesis, is no longer communist and is catching up with the West, causing discouraging narcissistic blows to six centuries of dominating the world. Moreover, the threat to the West’s narcissism is coming from the success of China and Japan and several other unexpected countries that were just colonies few decades ago. As mentioned before  the most common and only known reaction to narcissistic hurt is  anger and aggression. And that is what the world is facing now,  in the reactions of few neurotic immoral individuals who enjoy fictional authority of international nature.

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 [aF1]

 Hate, the Basic Human Feeling:

Hate is an intriguing feeling because it could emerge and take hold of the subject’s mind without obvious causes; and then drives that subject to discover or find out reasons for its existence. It is almost a state of mind that occurs before the subject makes the effort to justify its presence.  

Love and hate in children show that hate appears earlier than love. This point is naturally a source of much arguing and disagreements. But there is good evidence that hate could occur spontaneously and seems to be less dependent on the existence of external sources to stimulate it. Love on the other hand generates later in the life of the infant, with more defined causes than those we find with hate. I am making that distinction to address later a psychoanalytic point of importance: how does the issue of love\hate emerge in humans to affect their cognition and intellect to the degree that could become dangerous (as it is now) or pathological as in daily and casual paranoiac reactions? To make myself clearer and save you the trouble of waiting for something new or different from the common ideas in that regard I say: love and hate are the origin and basic primary constituents of the individual’s sense of identity. An infant who does not have a sense of being yet (or even a sense existence) acquires his sense of being gradually and very slowly through recognizing (gaining consciousness) of those two emotions: love and hate. Psychological life begins once those emotions are experienced as conscious states. Hate in infancy does not need an object to first be felt while love needs an object to materialize: hating hunger does not need an object but love of feeding has the breast to love.

We can test this simple idea at the present time by the ease people hate Putin for few words or photos published about him, while loving him, even by his own people is not easy though he has a good reason to expect at least respect. Comparing his invasion of Ukraine and the harm it is doing to the invasion of Vietnam the harm it caused people there makes hating him ‘rather’ difficult.  The memory of the little girl running naked in panic after a Napalm attack that burned her skin and dress compared with compared with what the Russian are doing now in Europe makes us see how hate changes facts to an unreality that leads to distortion of truth. Making a comparison between the USA and Russia in that regard shows that hate is more destructive to mental, cognitive, even ethical issues than any other emotion. This makes me think: if love and hate are separated in an individual and hate finds a target in another person (Putin for instance) what happens to l without its antithesis? This occasion could cause what is called splitting of consciousness. In those occasions (loving and hating for no distinctive reason to justify the existence of either) results in the disappearance of mental and cognitive functions to make sense of the situations in question. This is the point where leaders practice the most unethical manipulation of the crowds which will forgive all and any flaw in the arguments presented to them when they are in a state of consciousness.

Hate: Justified and Unjustified.

It is not always difficult to notice and understand if hate is justified or unjustified in individuals. But in groups and big mases it is difficult to assess the soundness of their hate (sometimes even their love as in sports affiliations). Creating a state of split consciousness is quite easy if there is a silent agreement in the media to do that. I watch is SNBC, BBC, Euro News, and CNN International. It is odd that they all talk about the cruelty and inhumanity of Putin and rarely mention Russia. This is curious because: Putin is doing what he is doing for the security of Russia. He is doing it by Russians, and Russia was always (since 1917) the enemy. But that was when Russia was a communist country and easy to hang on its name all the hate needed. When the USA was waging wars all over the world for the last fifty years the presidents who did that were not mentioned as owning those wars. Why is it now the Putin war? BECAUSE calling it a war of a nation (Russia) requires identifying the reason and the cause for it, but if it is the war of an individual it is considered a criminal act, lunacy, etc., and thus hate could be defined, identified, objectified and criminalized….and utilized. They want the  war in the Ukraine to be an act of hate -of someone not a political act !!. In that case the media does not have the responsibility of telling its people what is its role in that war. For instance the media creates the atmosphere of a silly case of political crime that distracts from any responsibility created by Nato trying to expand the  European Community. Interestingly but sadly the media creates the favorable state of split of consciousness by promoting hate of ONE politician and another hat for his country. All those networks, which I follow as a retired man, need to create something to HATE for the European to stay together, or else they would sin and stop hating and may chose whom to love.          

All those sources keep informing of the cruelty of Putin and his dictatorship and nothing about Russia. It is a constant reminder of the ‘person’ to hate and not about what to hate in that person. Why they are very keen and insisting on keeping hate strong and alive. The very direct answer is fear that if people  lost their hate or got accustomed to it will start look at facts…. Instead! But why is the hate issue related to one subject (Putin) and not Russia as the country? If this is achieved people would definitely be asking questions about the causes that mobilizes a country against another country? This is an important question because no one person could mobilize a whole country in an act of hate against another nation (even prophets had to have causes and God's power behind the to deliver their messages) without presenting them with causes (Hitler presented the Versailles surrender document as a cause for a war).             The issue here is that the USA is no longer the might that could make all stand in attention, and Europe is getting more powerful in the modern meaning of political power and wants to dominate the world as it did all along before the USA glittered in the sky after the second world war. The issue is disconnecting causes from effects so that the chain of fact-reality- truth will get cut and the fact that globalization has replaced the old system of Westerner domination and political truth is not a monopoly of the western races alone. One thing needs to be mentioned here because I know what people in Europe are exposed to in the unethical propaganda that they are bombarded with….. half and distorted truth. Anyone who watches the Putin’s criminal bombarding of Kiev should ask why he bombards those particular apartments that are vacant and there are no human casualties attached to their direct hits by rockets?

Hate seems to have more impact on regular common daily thinking and could distort it easily. Why is that?

My next posing will be addressing this issue because the foundation and the basis of hate is projection: hate is a product of another psychical process.