Do We Ever Really Know Someone?

Do you think it’s possible to actually understand a person fully through some means/lenses we have at our disposal? Or would there always be some essence of them, something that would slip away, that wouldn’t fully fit a label, a diagnose, that we would distort by our own subjectivity, the angle we look at them from etc. I noticed people try to ”crack the code” of a person and with the widespread and easily accessible knowledge it’s become so common to think you can fully see through, understand, predict a person via things like psychology and eventual dsm diagnoses or attachment styles theory or astrology or biology. Are you guilty of any of these?

Everything is dialogue and narrative. It depends on what core you are reaching for. We may only be able to know people to the extent that language allows for. There will always be an untouched self, this is one of the key teachings of Carl Jung. There is the collective unconscious, and there is a personal unconscious. It is not that this unconscious is completely hidden, but it is not readily available to the ego. Some aspects of ourselves are more symbolic than other parts; our fantasies, our dreams, our ever so slight emotional responses that we then hold in the body without being aware of it.

Astrology, Attachment styles, psychological diagnosis, are all modes of translation. They are a medium that serves our biological need for narrative structure. At every level of existence we are fractured beings attempting to live in wholeness. Imagine the eye of an insect, fractured but made whole by one body, one container. This is true of our experiences as well, they are containers, and our identities (however we may categorize ourselves)carry the experience. Metaphysically, we experience time, identity, and consciousness in discontinuous ways. Sociologically, we are fractured across roles, cultures, and histories. Yet it remains true that narrative is what establishes cohesion - the core of all human connection.

Think about dreams for a moment, why do we dream? why is it that the body doesn’t register the dream state as an interruption of reality, but rather, a cohesive and structured experience? The stress of a nightmare is not symbolic to our bodies, because it is a lived experience.

Jung famously believed that the integration of our contradicting selves leads to a kind of psychic liberation. He was famously interested in Vedic astrology, which ties into my point above about narrative. Something that people continue to get wrong about astrology is that it is a way to decode your personality, but the point of Jyotish is to teach us that this is all a trap. Your personality is not just a code, but a key to liberating yourself. In Vedic astrology, the entire personality is an illusion and to be attached to it is to remain stuck in the rebirth cycle.

All of these things are a way to view oneself and others from many different angles. To see the differences without denying their existence is wisdom, but to get attached to our preferences about these differences is to live in fear.

Even unconscious life desires a form in which to reach out and express itself. We are all feeling around in the dark using stories and myths. Oftentimes what you believe to be the truth about another person is a story that is being told about them, and this is not to say it is a false story or that we have to get emotionally caught up in the weight of finding out what is real and what is false. The point that I am making here is that it is all story. We are the ultimate symbol, but it isn't nihilistic, it’s part of our survival. I want to leave you with one of my favorite poems that I believe will sum up the answer to your question.

"Self-Portrait" by Sándor Weöres (1913 – 1989)
My friend, you who claim to know me,
look round my room: nothing of its decoration
was my own choosing; open my wardrobe:
it has nothing to show you that is specially me.

My lover and my dog know how I caress them,
but I remain unknown to them. My old instrument
is well aware of my hand's contours;
it too cannot sing about me.

Yet I am not in hiding - simply, I do not exist.
I act, I suffer, as all men do,
but my essential core is non-existence itself.

My friend, you must not regard me as having secrets.
I am as transparent as glass - how then
do you imagine you can really see me?