The animals people cannot stand
Ten animals come up again and again when people are asked which one they cannot bear. Each page here takes one of them: what people say, what the animal is really like, and what a strong dislike can point to in the person who feels it.
How to use these pages
The idea behind them is Carl Jung’s: a strong reaction to something outside us sometimes points to something we have kept out of sight inside. It is explained in Projection: why other people make you so angry. Nothing here is a diagnosis, and none of it predicts anything. If a fear of an animal gets in the way of your daily life, that is a phobia, and a doctor or a therapist is the right person to talk to.