We need to break this question down into several parts.
Psych is really interesting and fascinating … people love to be entertained and get a satisfying glimpse into themselves and the people in their lives. So at the level of intellectual curiosity, many people DO study & explore the surface of psych.
At a deeper level, the more you understand your own unconscious drives, the more destabilized you become (temporarily). This is because such deep insight undermines your sense of choice, free-will and autonomy. It interfere’s with the “identity” you’ve carried your whole life.
You are able to see your subjectivity and your interpretive framework (positive), but then you quickly discover that SOMETHING OTHER than your “choice” is the AUTHOR of it, and that is quite scary & destabilizing (negative).
Evolution has built a “homeostasis preservation” program into our DNA, and the negative and destabilizing parts of the discovery suddenly kick this program into gear, & our priorities suddenly shift to something more surface level.
In short, we all want to study it, but we are unconsciously motivated to keep it quite shallow. As (somewhat anecdotal) evidence for this, I’ve noticed MUCH LESS engagement (comments, +- votes, or shares/links) to my most threatening posts. Even when viewership is high, engagement (even critical) is shockingly non existent …. it’s basically crickets on some of these posts.
Dewey Gaedcke’s answer to What are the benefits of seeking therapy?