Claiming total self-honesty itself signals defensive self-deception

Evidence

Now when people claim complete self-honesty while stating that they have no faults they are reluctant to admit to themselves, we cannot say they are lying. But we can at least raise an eyebrow, Spock-like. Such people would seem to be very unusual. Are some people completely open to their faults? … If all of us do have some ugly truths about ourselves we would just as soon ignore, then one ugly truth about these nonresponders, right off the top, is that they are not as honest with themselves as they say they are. They are defensive about their self-knowledge and defensive about their defensiveness. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1813

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1813
• XREF: connects to: Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 283; The ego is built on the same self-deception as ritual sacrifice — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 60; Rejecting all appearance as false illusion leads to losing truth itself — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 552 (+4 more)