HOW we see others as opposed to WHAT we see is the subtle devil in the details. We can see that a person has a lot of problems, that the person may be obstinate, bombastic, egotistical, and so on, and think that they are basically a good person inside who is troubled, or that they are pathological and we want them to go away. The question is, is that "HOW" - troubled vs pathological - accurate or not? Does viewing a pathological person as pathological mean that the person making the assessment is also pathological? Or vice versa? Is a person who views a pathological person as normal but wounded pathological themselves? Or normal and ignorant and projecting their normality onto pathology? Or how about viewing a normal person as pathological? That is usually the case for pathologicals!
If we are dealing with non-pathological issues, just simply differences in personality types, we may view a highly driven, ambitious, competitive person as tiresome and irritating while a placid, non-competitive person may be viewed as a pleasure to be with. Do we suggest that this is because we, ourselves, are of either ilk? Quite often, it is the placid person who more easily tolerates the driven person.
Obviously, two very driven, competitive people will clash quite often.
The term "resistance" was used by Freud to designate the reluctance that his patients had regarding discussing their deepest, most painful and humiliating experiences during analysis. He believed that resistance was often related to repression which was a subconscious, or semi-conscious, tendency to remove or withhold from consciousness impulses or memories which the patient found particularly unpleasant to remember or admit as their own. So far, so good. We could even relate this repression to split off areas of the self - sort of a a horizontal description of the subconscious rather than a vertical one. It's not stuff that is "buried" but rather "walled off."
Things got a lot more interesting when many individuals - among the scientists, psychologists, physicians, psychiatrists - rejected some of Freud's chief theories, particularly his ideas about sex running the show and everyone being basically homosexual or bisexual, and little boys yearning for their fathers to commit sodomy on them, only inhibited by their fear of castration, and so forth. (Freud was a psychopath.)
So, Freud decided that this resistance to his ideas was psychological resistance: that all these people who rejected his ideas were not willing to own up to their own urges for incestuous sodomy and fear of castration as infants.
Keep in mind that Freud never, EVER, at any time, offered any scientific proof of his ideas.
So, if anyone cannot take Freud's word for things that he claimed, that person ended up having to defend themselves against the argument that they held similar unconscious desires, fears etc. Any critic of Freud who did not accept universal bisexuality was accused of having unrecognized homosexual tendencies within himself, and, because he so vehemently denied them, was accused of having them in very strong doses!!
Hopefully you can see the elements of the Reversive Blockade argument here as well as a powerful Paramoralism. This is a mind-job of epic proportions. Another comparison that comes to mind is the Emperor's New Clothes.
Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that there are such things as prejudices and that they are like programs or buffers as we understand them. Programs, buffers, prejudices can explain why a person cannot accept good evidence about a particular topic, preferring to continue in the belief that they do not wish to have disturbed. This sort of problem in human judgment was recognized and described long before Freud ever came along.
The problem is that Freud imputed "subconscious resistance" to everyone who disagreed with him . When one does this - accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being guilty of what they disagree with, only subconsciously - you are employing a tactic that cuts both ways.
If a man is truly suffering from fears that his father will castrate him and is not conscious of it, it is certainly reasonable to say that he would be unlikely to accept such an idea and is equally unlikely to accept any proof of such thinking. BUT, on the other hand, such a man who does suffer from such fears subconsciously might also be more susceptible than others to being convinced that such beliefs are universal and he, therefore, has no reason to feel that he has a problem!
In other words, suppose it was Freud himself who held all these types of beliefs inside himself? Would it not be likely that he would convince himself that they are universal and normal and then project them onto others?
Ordinary, everyday experience can tell us that selfish people are particularly likely to point out selfishness in others and habitual liars can be crusaders against lies. I've read cases, and observed, people who are very sexually insecure who are homophobic or behave in a super-macho, bullying way. These kinds of things have been recognized by the ordinary person for years - it is part of "folk wisdom."
BUT, there is NO reason to assume that this is a universal characteristic of all people and that EVERYONE is perverse in their own subconscious and that the main reason they reject things/people/practices is because they desire those very things! That would be like thinking that the parent who is upset to learn that their son has committed murder are only motivated by the wish to have done it themselves!
Think about it for a moment. If negative reactions to anything are as Freud claimed they were - a refusal to accept them as your own - then reactions against murder, child abuse, rape, war, and so on, must arise from unconscious impulses to do those things!
The fact is, there are many reasons people do or do not do, see or do not see. Freud's rule that he who responds with intensely negative reactions to anything thereby discloses his unconscious longing to emulate it is patently ridiculous.
Yes, we have often seen situations where people are unaware of the motives within themselves that they criticize particularly in others. And most of us have encountered situations like this in ourselves. But there are many things that can cause strong dislike or revulsion.
Long before Freud came along, Shakespeare wrote "the lady doth protest too much" indicating an attempt to conceal her real motive. Dickens wrote about Uriah Heep who was loaded with false humility that concealed a ravening predator inside. We are all familiar with braggarts who are failures in life. But because we know that there are such individuals who are pathological or pathologized, there is no reason to think that there is no such thing as real, honest emotions, reactions, expressions of grief, indignation, etc; or that courtesy and true humility do not exist.
In short, it is a travesty of psychology to suggest that people are inevitably, regularly, or generally inclined - subconsciously - to what they find distasteful, unnatural or unattractive.
By the same token, it is a travesty to suggest that how we see others tells us about ourselves.
It may, or it may not.
