> I don't think I've ever seen this expressed before; that is, people (in general) having "psychological/emotional barriers" to "actual coding"?

Are you a developer, by any chance? There's a whole academic field of study[1] dedicated to overcome the barriers faced by people trying to develop software artifacts without the need of being trained in a formal system.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_development [2] http://acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html#Introduction