Perhaps the biggest leap for a scientist is accepting multiple truths. The important thing here is to recognize that the critique isn’t simply about neuroscience being right or wrong. It is about seeing the multiple, coinciding realities to every situation. Yes, “symptoms” may be there, but they only gain resonance when humans add meaning to them. Meeting someone with a different perception of reality can have many different interpretations. To pathologize this person as crazy is certainly one interpretation, but it is not necessarily the best, most accurate, or only “true” one. Take for instance, the experience of hearing voices. Some cultures believe that a person hearing voices is having a shamanistic experience. Indeed, this person might become a spiritual leader. Using the lens of bio-psychiatry, we could go into that other culture and spot what looks to be textbook DSM schizophrenia. On the other hand, using the lens of shamanism, we could go into a mental hospital and find a group of people in touch with the divine. Now it may seem obvious to bio-psychiatrist that all shaman are really schizophrenics, and that the cultures they live in simply haven’t been exposed to modern mental diagnostic procedures. The other way of looking at this, however, is to understand that truth is unstable and is intimately shaped by the language we use. There may be an experience that the “schizophrenic” or “shaman” has, but as human beings we can only describe that experience by imbuing it with language and subjective meaning. There is no objective acquisition of it. The meaning we choose to give it creates consequences that will affect the life of the “schizophrenic” or “shaman.” Returning to self-fulfilling prophecy theory, the person hearing voices can be made to experience each way of life through the very labeling and social reinforcement of terms like shamanism or schizophrenia. This is to say that the experience of and reaction to shamanism and schizophrenia are socially constructed.
