Everything that irritates us about others...

@fmf said
...leads us to an understanding of ourselves.

~ Carl Jung

Is this true for you?

It's true for everyone.

The question remains, what sort of understanding can we glean from it, an understanding based on truth, or an 'understanding' based on projection?

@suzianne said
The question remains, what sort of understanding can we glean from it, an understanding based on truth, or an 'understanding' based on projection?

Feel free to have a go at answering the question that you say remains.

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I think it's only likely to be true when one is relatively young, like in one's teens or starting out as an adult in one's early twenties.

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At least you understand that you're perplexed.

@fmf said
Feel free to have a go at answering the question that you say remains.

It is unanswerable, as it is different for everybody. There is no hard and fast rule.

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You're only running it through your own filters, and not his.

I think he meant it differently than you are taking it.

It looks differently on the surface, but I think there's another angle to it, thus my initial response.

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We touched on this quote in some class I took. It is always brought up as an intro to talking about psychological projection. Jung talked a lot about a quality of the inner self, a dark side, if you will. He called it "the shadow". Billy Joel called it "the stranger". He must have studied Jung at some point because Jung's "shadow" involves the unconscious mind, and is thus normally a "stranger" to the conscious mind. But the shadow, the stranger, is nearly always seen as our darker desires, sort of like Freud's "id". Freud himself called the "id" das Es or "the it".

Anyways, the main idea of projection is that we project this "shadow" onto other people, and it is this that we "hate", or are irritated by in ourselves, and thus it becomes a suitable guise to paint others with. Suitable, of course, TO the unconscious "shadow".

I prefer to think this quote can also refer to "the other side", a part of the self that recognizes the dark "shadow" and seeks to work past it, and so the thing we learn about ourselves is how to realize our true self, a process Jung called "individuation". When self-realized, an individual can lessen the damage done by the "shadow", and start engaging with the truth of the self and its relationship with others.

@drewnogal said
People who put initials after their names to make their posts look more interesting.

D
BA Hons

drewno.......If you're talking about me it isn't to make it more interesting, just makes you look less interesting trying to copy me. 😛

Would you happen to be friendly with the TWINS??? 🙂

-VR

@very-rusty said
drewno.......If you're talking about me it isn't to make it more interesting, just makes you look less interesting trying to copy me. 😛

Would you happen to be friendly with the TWINS??? 🙂

-VR

I have friends in high places Rusty but am not at liberty to tell you who.