As stated, my friend is interested in confirming and supporting psychological claims on the basis of the life events of Moses our Teacher. He uses facts taken from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), while his main aim is really the psychological claims themselves.
In your answer you argued that there is no difference at all between this and interpreting the Torah.
In my humble opinion there are two significant differences:
1. The aim of the activity—even if a contemporary commentator uses sociological or psychological models to explain the Torah, my friend is doing almost the opposite: he is confirming the models on the basis of events in the Torah.
2. The normative value—when the Sages inferred advice from Scripture such as “A person should not sow jealousy among his children,” they inferred from the verses the will of God, which has normative value and is therefore Torah-related. By contrast, my friend is treating factual components in biblical narratives. One could formulate the point this way: is there a commandment of Torah study in delving deeply into the factual component of Torah narratives?

All the best, and thank you in advance

By the way, regarding psychological aspects, as I recall, in the commentary Nachalat Yosef (which was also written on the Book of Ruth), on the portion of “Send for yourself,” there is a huge difficulty that arises from reading the second Rashi there:
“And Moses consulted the Divine Presence. He said: I told them that it is good, as it says (Exodus 3), ‘I shall bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt,’ etc. By their lives, I will give them room to err through the words of the spies, so that they will not inherit it.” But if he consulted the Divine Presence and that was the answer, then why in the end did he send the spies?? This is a tremendous difficulty, and as I recall Nachalat Yosef explains it nicely. (And you also see this from the fact that he added “for Joshua” in Rashi there.)

In any case, is there no practical difference regarding the blessings over Torah study for Ethics of the Fathers according to a certain opinion?

Intentions make no difference at all on this issue. At most, it would not be the commandment of Torah study in its optimal form (study for its own sake). So what? Is it forbidden to study not for its own sake in a synagogue?
As for Torah study in the narrative component of the Torah—you’ve burst through an open door. I’ve written about this at length here several times (and even more in my trilogy). But this is no different from biblical commentators. Why didn’t you ask about studying Rashi on the Torah in a synagogue? I’ve written several times that in my opinion this is Torah in the person (search the site). And again, the question whether there is fulfillment here of the commandment of Torah study does not necessarily determine whether it is permitted or forbidden to do this in a synagogue.

K,
More power to you for deciding to publish your Torah interpretations. But why in this thread? 🙂

I hope I’m not overburdening you with my comments, and I apologize in advance given my assumption that you are a fairly busy person.
As for your claim that intentions make no difference, and that at most this is study not for its own sake: seemingly, aside from the fact that “for its own sake” is missing here, even “intention” is missing here (and there is a difference between the two, as I once read in an article of yours, and as Rabbi Lichtenstein established at the beginning of his lectures on Zevahim). Using examples from the Torah to support other aims is nothing but an “unintentional act” with respect to Torah study.
I’ll mention an example that occurred to me last night:
The Talmud in Sabbath 9b teaches that although there is no obligation to interrupt a meal in order to pray the afternoon prayer (as long as there is still time to do so after the meal), for the evening prayer one should be stricter, since its time extends all night and there is concern that a person will get drawn on and on until he does not pray at all. Now imagine a psychologist comes and, in the course of a lecture on procrastination, presents this ruling as an expression of a psychological principle in the phenomenon of procrastination—is that Torah study? Not at all. He is not interested in the halakhic implications of the fact that a person tends to postpone what he is able to postpone; he is only using as a nice illustration the fact that the Sages also noticed this.
Surely you would agree that if this is indeed not Torah study but simply psychological work, it should not be done in a synagogue.

As for the factual component in the Torah—I have no doubt that the basic dimension of the narrative component in the Torah has value as Torah study; after all, we were commanded to study Scripture. And that answers your difficulty about Rashi (perhaps not completely; let us say, for example, dealing with the route of the spies’ tour in the Land of Israel geometrically or only longitudinally). The question is only about delving into details that were not mentioned and trying to infer them on the basis of one kind of analogy or another.

Hello Miki,
First, I prefer not at such intervals. I already almost don’t remember what was being discussed.
As for your point itself, regarding this example too I would say the same thing. I’ve already written here that in my view studying factual elements of the Torah or the aggadic literature of the Sages is study that does not have much Torah value. But it is Torah study (at least in the person. And in interpreting the Torah, perhaps even in the object). You can search the site for the distinction between Torah in the person and Torah in the object.
There is indeed a difference between intention and for-its-own-sake. So what? Even if both intention and for-its-own-sake are lacking, it is still Torah study (even if not the commandment of Torah study). By the way, specifically with regard to Torah study, this is an example where it is not clear that there really is a difference between intention and for-its-own-sake.