Interpretation and the loss of Reality.

        I had in mind that I should, by now, end my participation in the ongoing discussions regarding psychoanalysis and psychopolitics too. However, people and events keep going on and around, making it easy to go back on my decision. This time it was a neighbor who watches with me the news of the world (four-sometimes five TV Channels). We disagree categorically on the war in Ukraine. Because of his personal experiences, it is almost natural for him to hate Russia and not because of his love for Ukraine. This is my reason to go back on the decision to stop my blog. I point out to my neighbor and still do, that Western Program Commentators- announce and present wish fulfillment meanings to what they announce and deliver. The most blatant example is Russia's kidnapping of Ukrainian kids, separating them from their families, and maybe indoctrinating them too. He was never able to give me a reason why Russia will smear her reputation (in this war in particular) by doing something stupid like that. He could not admit that Russia took advantage of having kids separated from their kin because of the war, protected, fed, and dressed up the kids well, and made a show of giving them back to their families. Russia could have denied completely having any children to return, or just made them victims of hateful treatment.

        This is the reason I come back and deal with something that could look very unrelated to my neighbor’s NEED to create a negative opinion of Russia. How could a person Interpret something to believe in after, as if it came to his mind only later and became part of the real world? How beg a person, erases the distinction between perception and opinion? Once again, how do we use interpretation as information that deserves to be considered real issues, and has the power of evidence?

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        I was watching an old movie entitled “The Nuremberg Trials”. The issue was how people make beliefs first and then get convinced of their own creation as if their interpretations stem from reality. and their conviction is not a belief but an idea. In those cases, I think the problem is in how we reach interpretations that are turned into facts, reality, truth, and convictions. The issue in that movie is exactly this: are the Germans guilty of crimes committed against the Jews for convictions that originally stemmed from interpretations and not from facts? Or how political leaders prepare the field of political opinion to become a field of interpretative products. The easy way out of this dilemma is not to start from the beginning but from the second point after the beginning. Start from the success of Jews and their strong adherence to certain undeclared rules, in addition to hard work and effective mentality. If the first point is not properly identified, then the Jews’ success becomes material for interpretation. Some of those interpretations were enough to create hate and doubts of the Jews which ended up with something that cannot be understood even if the interpretations prove to be right.

Interpretation in Psychoanalysis:

        I will get to the second point without groundwork because it is common knowledge, at least to psychoanalysts. The first conceptual notion in psychoanalysis is that any human manifestation (like dreams, symptoms, slips of the tongue, even war) is not just what they are, but what they carry within their structure of additional meaning. Freud’s first book was “The Interpretation of Dreams”. He recognized that the dream says something, thus, it permits interpretation. A dream is a scene in which everyday life is presented in a way that says something more that is integrated into its details and is expressed metaphorically (He is a rock…strong like a rock), or within a metonymy (Like Gibraltar). Interpreting with metonymy and metaphor in mind. They are the basis of psychological life in general, therefore, we can only understand matters if we interpret them. As a psychoanalyst, I listened to the patient trying to understand by interpreting what he experiences and failing in making sense of “nonsense” (she was unable to reach sexual climax because of such and such …etc., when it was not sexual satisfaction but pleasing a hateful mate…. because of other nonsexual traits). Psychological life is a state of mind, body, and life that is expressed in metonymic or metaphoric moods.    

        The question to formulate and try to answer in this regard is why we are susceptible to coming up with the wrong interpretations at the most significant points in our psychological life. The answer is the fact that the wrong answer is inaccuracy metaphors and metonymies. Psychosomatic inability to swallow could be of the wrong treatment or certain foods, but also to swallow ideas demands. A good psychoanalyst is one who detects that the patient is misconstruing his consciousness by adopting the wrong metaphor to express it.  

        We can just cut it short by emphasizing that psychological life is a jumble of metonymies and metaphors, i.e., interpretations. In other words, if it was not for the gift of language we would not have had psychoneuroses or psychoses, but would not have had music and songs, love and hate (I mean Ukraine and Russia).

        Going back to psychoanalysis, interpretation is the replacement of perception because it has the advantage of being wrong but with no obvious correct substitute for things. What would a dying empire-the European-do with its narcissism (its image)?

        It creates hateful countries, leaders, issues, and as the president and manager of NATO said bombastically (our)Values that the OTHER only has their opposite: we cannot be alike, or we will lose our minds. The same thing was created by Germans to explain (justify) the war. The Germans had a reason to want war (the Versailles treaty). They must have an enemy to wage war. They INTERPRETED their hurt as caused by an internal enemy, and convinced the public that they are an envied great people, and the Jews are the obstacle in the way to glory. The interpretation made the Jew the one who should be humiliated to save the Germans from an old humiliation represented by being the superior race that was humiliated by the inferior race (Jews).

        I think that misconceptions create hate, and hate creates the required interpretations.