What Do Words Mean?

It IS A Communication Problem
By Patricia Lefave, Labeled D.D.(P)

Here is an example of how the SAME words can have opposite meaning, depending upon the speaker’s point of view and ALSO upon the point of view of the one who is hearing them.

“You don’t reveal the contents of your training to outsiders or others as it will only confuse them.”

This is a statement at the abstract nexus of meaning. What it means, exactly, depends upon a number of things about what is understood.
Is it a negative or a positive statement?
If the speaker’s intentions are to clarify meaning, then the statement is contradictory in content, since offering enough information on a subject doesn’t cause confusion for others, it clears up confusion.

However, if the speaker’s intentions are to confuse others, then it makes sense to withhold information in order to achieve that goal doesn’t’ t it?

On the other side of that transaction is the listener. How does the listener hear those same words? If the listener is looking for resolution for both self and others, then the statement won’t seem to make any sense. But, what if the listener is motivated by a twisted desire for power and control over others as a way of making himself feel good?
What do the same words mean then?
Is the same statement an accusation, a revelation or an instruction? Does it depend upon your current understanding, your motivation, your character and your personal goals?

I think that it does and I also think that it is important to see this sort of thing from outside it, rather than try to find concrete meaning in it applied equally to all, based upon any individual’s point of view. There IS a meaning on the level of abstract meaning but it does depend upon the point of view. The point of view needed to see it as an abstract dynamic is the overview. We cannot take our own concrete experience and turn those details into an abstract truth which applies to all. It is a Quantum leap from one to the other.

This nexus of meaning is a communication paradox the psychiatrized are caught up in all the time. The psychiatrists actually don’t understand it any better than the psychiatrized. In fact, most psychiatrized understand it better, but we don’t get heard. We get silenced. More often then not, that happens the minute after the label is applied. Nothing says, ‘invalidate this person’ faster than the label that signals virtually everyone to do just that.

After that, life’s meaning is supplied FOR us, often by force, by those who are certain that they know what they in fact, don’t understand at all. You might say, they think they know things simply because they believe them.

You might also say that if you want to REALLY communicate and get some REAL understanding, the first question you need to ask is, exactly WHICH ‘things’ do you believe you know?

When people believe that they already understand something, all further search for the truth and resolution stops doesn’t it?

Psychiatrists need to understand the whole thing, including the part THEY are playing in keeping the whole mess going. They are not ‘outside’ this problem as ‘objective observers’ as they like to believe they are.

“Mental illness’ of this kind is about a GROUP dynamic and the group is just as ‘ill’ if not more ‘ill’ than the identified patient, who is often the target of the whole group. This dynamic creates chaos on a non linear level that grows exponentially by chain reaction. (like fission) Rather than by accepting this as an ‘’illness’’ neatly located within the targeted ‘patient’ the cure will only be found by clarification of both personal and collective MEANING.

Equality of worth is the path to understanding and real understanding is the psycho spiritual cure. It is the metaphysical level that must be understood. We cannot 'cure' a metaphysical illness by physical means.