Why The Symbolic Is More Important Than The Real

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

We all know from experience that feelings are stronger than money. Nevertheless, we are constantly surprised by this. And often we just can't believe it. That the symbolic and the subjective are much stronger than any objective reality.

- I cooked dinner, cleaned the apartment, I'm waiting for you, and you say that you miss my love?

- You were provided with everything, but you do not feel gratitude?

- You are there on everything ready, like cheese in butter, where can you get depression?

- He humiliates and torments you, how can you love and pity him?

- Mom is near, dad is near, we are safe, what are you afraid of?

- You were told - there is nothing scary, what are you worried about?

- You constantly say that you want to build relationships, but you also destroy them! How can you not see it?

- You want success, but you do everything so that you do not have time to do anything and do nothing.

- We have already looked under the bed twice, and you still believe that there is a snake sitting there and attacking you?

- I wanted to support you and calm you! Where did you find insult and devaluation of you in my words?

- You were abandoned by a loved one and you lost everything. How can you be calm and confident after that?

- Nobody here pays attention to you, why are you ashamed?

- She is old and fat, but how confident in herself. And you are young and beautiful - all in complexes, how can this be?

- He is disabled and from a poor family. Why does he play the piano better than you, healthy and with the best teacher?

- He does not understand anything about this, but he was able to win over the investors. How did he do it?

- You have objectively not achieved anything, why do you continue to do this?

And other phenomena. When it is not reality that decides something, but something else. What is inside the personality. Integrated into his psyche.

If I try and hope for praise, it doesn't mean that the other person will see it as well. He will see it according to his inner reality.

If I want to receive something, this does not mean that my entire inner reality also wants it. There may be forces (integrated, but then displaced) that are against. And then I don't know anything about my inner conflict.

If we have experienced some events together, this does not mean that we received the same experience and draw the same conclusions. We can even remember events in different ways. In accordance with the peculiarities of the subjective world of everyone.

If the two of us like something, it does not mean that we see the same thing there.

If we perceived the event in general differently and our memories differ, this does not mean that some of us are normal and some are not.

So why is the symbolic so much stronger than the real?

The explanation is socio-biological. Our brain and its neural circuits were not formed as a result of the objective reality that surrounded us until the age of 12-16. And as a result of the symbolization of this reality for us by our environment.

As an example, a really traumatic incident. The child and the loss of a parent. It would seem that the event itself objectively traumatizes the child's psyche. But it turns out that she is more traumatized by the absence and lack of symbolization of the event (explanations understandable to the child). Symbolization constructs the psyche. Its deficit includes archetypes and they rule the inner world as they "want" - in the terminology of the Jungians, and psychoanalysis describes this as an absent or "bad" object that the psyche "heals" in the most bizarre way.

How do we explain to ourselves and others certain events? - that is the main question. The event is also important, but it doesn't make the weather in the first place. The brain is not formed from the fact that parents bought an expensive crib, the highest quality food and clothing. Our brain was formed from the fact that our parents talked to us, how they talked in front of us, with what words and images they explained ourselves and this world to us. According to their inner world.

One more example. Many remember the terrible tales (Vasilisa the Wise, for example) of our Soviet childhood and say that this is where the trauma began. This is usually said as a joke, but, as I understand it, there is only a fraction of a joke. But it is not the fairy tale that traumatizes, but the lack of attention to the child who has heard something terrible, the lack of response to this terrible from the adults. After all, there are children who listen to the terrible with interest, with eyes burning with emotion. Did the fairy tale give way to feelings and creativity? Or did the fairy tale slow down the experience and loop it around fear?

The psyche perfectly digests some situations because the brain is configured to integrate all the incoming material. But to understand exactly how the digestion process works and what is the result - you can only carefully observe the person. Or behind me in the psychoanalyst's chair, that yes, I turn what is happening into this. Or does it lie unnecessarily dead weight? Or have I already choked on all this?

What do we do with what is entering us? How do we explain ourselves and the world?

What in our explanations helps us maintain self-esteem, contact with others, self-expression and creativity?

What in our explanations prevents us from communicating, feeling good, being understandable and understood, creating?

It is impossible to say that this is bad or that is good. This is correct, but this is not. Alas, this does not work if the explanations are always the same, unambiguous and come from the distant past. All these ambiguities and richness of contexts are dealt with by psychoanalysis.