Yeah, Sam knows that Dean can be wrong, and is perfectly willing to call Dean out when he thinks Dean's making a mistake, but on the deepest level where a person's core characteristics are, he has unshakable faith in Dean and Dean's character. I think--and I'll try to be clear here what is a consensus professional health care provider opinion and what is my own opinion as a person who loves a particular work of fiction--that this is in part because Sam is crazy (consensus health care) and in part because spn has a spiritual/mythic underpinning that matches poorly with current beliefs about how people should and do act when family members are very imperfect irl (personal opinion about work of fiction).
I would say, for example, that Sam isn't afraid of Dean even in 10.23 when he's kneeling in front of Dean waiting to be killed. This is, realistically, in my experience... well, impossible is too strong a word. In 25 years of nursing I have met maybe two or three people who were in imminent danger of death (by any cause, not just violence), not medicated, and not at all afraid. But highly unusual. And I think that particular disjuncture between real life and 10.23 is because 10.23 is meant to be a mythic portrayal of unconditional love and faith. The particulars aren't what is meant to matter, it's the feeling itself--the love and faith--that is what the creators were trying to portray.
And I think, between adults, if you ignore the imminent fear of death part, this kind of mostly-fearless unconditional love for a family member who is harmful or even potentially quite dangerous is actually very common. Usually it's because the harmful/dangerous family member is cognitively impaired; maybe they have Alzheimer's or are an adult child with a severe developmental disorder. I had one patient, for example, who during the domestic violence section of the admission assessment said that he was worried his violent, adult, developmentally disabled son was strong enough that he (the son) would kill him (the patient) someday, but he had searched extensively for placement and there wasn't anything available in his price range that didn't suck, so he'd take his chances. And what can you say in that situation? It's a tragic but rational decision and not my place to pretend I can fix it, when really I can't.
And even though Dean isn't cognitively impaired (usually) and is theoretically responsible for his actions (usually--but you'll notice he was impaired in 10.23, and vice versa in Levee), I think it's this kind of tragic situation that the creators of spn meant to portray. Sam and Dean's situation is so bad that it's unfixable on a concrete level, and the best that can be done to "fix" anything given the horrible circumstances is just keep loving each other. Life is, on a more mundane level, often like that, and one of the most profoundly beautiful aspects of art is how it lets us share through symbolism this aspect of life; that we get hurt and hurt others and can still love each other, hopefully ourselves, and the world.
So that's my primary take on the matter.
There are also some elements of spn that lend themselves uncomfortably well to the atticwife reading, and it's the largeness of those elements in some fans' minds (including, to some extent, my own) that I think results in the atticwife reading becoming increasingly popular, especially after the finale.
My own favorite encapsulation of the atticwife reading is this:
I can't link to the original because OP deactivated, but here's a link to my reblog.
It's been a long time since I've read The Yellow Wallpaper, so I could be remembering this part wrong, but I don't recall the protagonist, who is one of the og literary atticwives, being afraid of her husband. I don't think that's a necessary part of the trope, and I don't think it's primarily what Sam fans who are on the more atticwifey side of the reading spectrum are primarily interested in.
In case you haven't read it, The Yellow Wallpaper is a partially autobiographical story about a 19th century woman who gets postpartum depression mild "hysteria", is confined to a single room by her husband for a "rest cure", and slowly becomes psychotic and hallucinatory because solitary confinement is torture. Levee is very Yellow Wallpaper-y, and because of Levee, we have essentially irrefutable proof that Dean canonically *would* atticwife Sam. He did that in canon in Levee.
The fact that arguably the panic room detox was intended to be read as both necessary and in Sam's best interests doesn't negate the reading--if anything, it makes it more powerful, because, as anything but id fodder, that's a wildly regressive, way too on the nose, 19th century depiction of how a caring person might ever treat someone they love for mental illness/addiction, so if it's not The Yellow Wallpaper in modern clothing, then wtf is it doing there?? What is it accomplishing as a story if it's meant to be not that?
And the fact that Sam later comes to accept the version of the story in which Dean did the only thing he could have and saved Sam from himself in Levee, while Sam also over the years becomes in general quieter, more hesitant, more willing to accept Dean's violence as not Dean's fault and something to just be accepted about him, also really plays into this Stockholm Syndrome-ish reading.
To be clear, I'm big, big not a fan of Stockholm Syndrome, as originally formulated, as a reading for anything. It's fake and was made up by a cop to cover up for the fact that a particular group of hostages thought their captors were less bad than the police that rescued them were. I don't think love and compassion are weaknesses; I think they are strengths. And I don't think Sam is afraid of Dean, while Stockholm Syndrome as a "diagnosis" does assume an element of extreme helplessness and fear. But I do think Sam in the later seasons is crazy. Like, clinically, very symptomatic from PTSD crazy (per medical consensus diagnostic criteria), and also somewhat brainwashed; mostly by Lucifer and by life but also unintentionally some by Dean (personal opinion about a story).
A sane person would be afraid of Dean (a sane person would also be afraid of Sam, but that's another post). A sane person who wasn't, to some extent at least, the stereotype of a battered spouse wouldn't explain Dean's death threats to Jack by saying "the wires in his head get crossed, and he gets frustrated". He wouldn't let Dean convince him into facilitating the Jack in the Box drama coffin plan, because it's not only unethical and cruel, it's also just fucking stupid (the box is for an archangel. is Jack an archangel?).
I feel quite strongly that, just as Dean's final character arc is learning that his anger is based in fear of loss and starting to try to deal with that, Sam's final character arc is learning to stand up to Dean's violence on behalf of their child(-like ward). I think this is the intended reading of the Dabb years, and it does kind of presume some battered wife syndrome elements, even if fear is not one of them.
For me, I don't think there's any one right answer to this. It's a story, so different people will find different uses for it, and I think that's fine. You can use it as sexy id fodder (a lot of atticwife headcanons are this, I think. Mine certainly are). You can use it to process your own family crap (a lot of angry Sam OPs are doing this). You can use it for angst feels. You can try and figure out how to fix it (I love to do this!) Or you can do your best to ignore it and focus on other elements of the story that you prefer. The only way people handle it that I find objectionable personally is writing meta denying that it exists.
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