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It is not a simple task to describe a whole day. Which events, impressions, reflections should be included in this description, and which ones should be ignored as insignificant or superfluous? After all, the result should be a short essay, rather than a lengthy novel like that of James Joyce. I will focus on how the new experience of unplanned existence in a reality quite different from the habitual one is attempting to get integrated into the existing psychic structures. This is similar to the way we try to symbolise and structure the content of dreams and other session material in psychoanalytic research, looking for a “selected fact” that will suggest a direction to go forward.
I spent most of my life in Russia, my social capital was collected there, my identity has been imbued with Russian culture, and, actually, I have never contemplated emigrating. However, circumstances made my day begin in Israel over the last five months. I am a “new repatriate” undergoing the process of “absorption”, as they call it in Israel. On the one hand, I am to become part of this state, integrate into the structure of the local community; on the other hand, I am to absorb Israel into myself and place its culture, traditions, and laws of existence in my internal object world. And this is not something miniscule. When I turn off the alarm clock, I see the year 5783 on my phone screen.
The language is naturally key to integration. Most websites and mobile applications of banks, medical institutions, municipalities, product labels, or advertisements are written only in Hebrew. Hebrew is necessary for skilled work, and many people believe that it is vulgar not to speak Hebrew. So, learning the language becomes a kind of cognitive test and a social screen. This is especially important for me, because in six months I have plans to begin my internship to obtain my licence, which means that by that time I need to have learnt how to interact with the Hebrew-speaking inner world of patients an