Cultural Grounding of Mental Illness

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

An interesting article. Food for thought.
It had not really dawned on me how much of the horror of mental illness is tied
to the living refutation of the idea of free will, or the refutation of a strict separation
between mind and body.

Often there is an element of complicity - but many people just don't understand how it
is possible to helpless or deceived within your own mind - and I find it hard to understand
the possibility of not knowing this.

Just the fact that we operate from a specific limited worldview - and our data are limited - this
is enough to produce garbage conclusions. As anyone who has ever played Zendo will appreciate, induction can run away with you. Add emotions and physiologic factors into the mix and you get a horrible teaming mess, which is constantly going wrong, and constantly self-correcting. Most of these corrections are quickly forgotten, but if you obsess on them, you will see the fnords.