Part of the Casswiki article series Cassiopaean Experiment and Psychology
Subjectivity is so pervasive to the human condition that it is difficult to say where this would not hold sway. We could say that subjectivity is the capacity to experience things in a personally specific manner, often so as not to be able to explain these to another in a manner that would be perceived in a compatible way by this other. The tendency to subjectivity could be said to be the principal obstacle to clear communication between people.
In popular parlance, subjectivity is often linked to emotional reaction. Subjectivity is however not the same thing as emotion. Subjectivity is the preference to rather consider one’s favorite [beliefs](Belief vs. faith) than the external world. Such a tendency is generally backed by a strong emotional attachment to these beliefs. Emotion in itself may serve seeing the world as it is, thus subjectivity is not an intrinsic attribute of emotion, but rather a misuse of emotion – as in [emotional thinking](Emotional thinking).
Subjectivity is opposed to consciousness in the sense that it arbitrarily confines itself inside one preferred manner of seeing. Subjectivity can become so habitual that the implicit restrictions imposed by the mind on itself disappear from its conscious reach. Subjectivity can to varying degrees confine the mind in an invisible prison at the boundary of which possibilities are [automatically shut out from consideration](Information selection and substitution). Sometimes these possibilities are not shut out per se, but are emotionally judged a priori unacceptable and thus never get deeper review.
Subjectivity is at the metaphysical level the placing of one’s beliefs or conceptions, however these may have arisen, before any concern for how things may be in the outer world. Subjectivity is in a sense a statement to the effect of wishing to be separate from this outer world. This makes subjectivity an attribute of the service to self polarity.
There are a variety of influences that may be active in increasing a person’s subjectivity, many of them possible to overcome. Very common in our society is psychological wounding, e.g. the result of the influence of parents inadequate to the task of parenting. (Narcissistic wounding is particularly common.) People with the most severe character pathologies, who show pathological extremes of subjectivity, can also exert a very toxic influence on those around them. By exposure to expressions of their abnormal psychology, the ability of others to use healthy common sense and perceive psychological reality can be impaired. The worst pathologies in this regard are psychopathy and characteropathy. A stronger tendency towards subjectivity among people in general can also spread like an infection throughout a society when it becomes hystericized.