There is no little if any criteria as to how one person can have more knowledge of himself than another. Information travels through people’s body and brain and through other mediums obtainable by the standard five senses. People gain knowledge of themselves by all of those means and they gain knowledge of others through all of those means. If one was to make an absolute criteria of difference, then it would be based on the specific form of information transfer done in the nervous system and brain, for which a person doesn’t necessarily need additional forms of information to comprehend.
But, when one looks at all the supplementary forms of information transfer that one uses when doing anything, including actively engaging in personal -thought/self-reflection, it seems that this is actually a more shallow criteria than one would initially think; one doesn’t think in a vacuum after all, even with the famous fictional brain in the vat scenario there was information being fed to the brain. So the direct access to one’s own nervous system and brain is likely the most relevant for purposes of purely physically oriented health care, not psychology.
For purposes of psychology, the relevance or primacy of deferring to a person’s own words on his thoughts (rather than one who knows him) is more due to the fact that its far more common for one to have spent more time observing himself than anyone else has spent time observing him. But, its not always the case; to just give one type of example out of many:
Let’s say two people were in a room all day and one was staring at a TV ensconced in the shows he was watching, while the other, bored with the shows, found it more interesting to focus on the other person. In that case the person uninterested in the TV would actually likely have more relevant knowledge of the other person’s psychological state during that day, than that other person would have of it himself.
This can be read into in different levels. On the level of the ego: intention counts: it may be purposeful for the self knowledge seeker to distort, dissemble it’s self, in preparation of a final dissolution. The wise dissemble as soon as they can, and don’t wait to a publicly insitutionalized way to do it. The TV viewing is another way to get at it, the self image can also be separated easily, as is the role one serves in any endeavour, or, at the very least, in the role of the disassembler.
Whether this is secondary or primary depends on the will, the good/bad intent, and the result of such an endeavour. That it has to be done in good faith belief and it should become obvious, if the ego structure not suffer the apparent sudden de compensation which may result. The lack of primacy then is compensated by defences, which are really symbolic artifacts, which the man of good faith will erect as a filter, through which the subtle may be spared.
The makes sense. It seems you’re saying that those of good faith will still try to compensate for their lack of primacy (just as those of bad faith do), but they will not do it out of pure ego, but to spare certain subtle things about themselves (perhaps seemingly minor, but actually of utmost importance) from being equated with all the mundane details about themselves that they can only know at best slightly better than those who know them well.
Agreed, but also there is a skill aspect. For various reasons people often do not want to know certain things or even much at all about themselves. Others may lack this obstacle in reading that person. Further other people may simply be very skilled at reading people (or that individual person) - a spouse or parent my have specific skills at reading their family member.
There are psychological reasons why someone may not what to know what is obvious to (some, a few) others.
There can be psychological reasons why someone misreads someone, even if one is skilled at it. But these need not be present also.
Moreno: those types of people who misread people or read them, because of the shift in focus, as in this OP, the person decides to concentrate on another person rather then watching TV, may be qualified to do wo, however the question is, if how often has he seen that person represented in different contexts, and whether this man watching TV is really the same man who was presented at another time, another place. So skill at reading may be questionable in terms of verification.
What if, if this same person watching TV is the identical twin of the very same man, a fact unknown to the person watching him? What if that person has a total different hard wired mind set inside of him?
That’s the problem with presentation, there is always that irking doubt that besets the person, what if, that person is not the person he thinks he is?
This is why self knowledge is dubious at best on first, second or even innumerable readings. There are just too many opinions floating around out there.