A pretty clear example of this is the The Truman Show delusion. It is pretty undeniable that socio-cultural reality effects delusions with them evolving (for the most part) from religious experiences, to radio waves, to microchip implants, and finally to reality television. To say that mental illness is just 'chemical imbalances' in the brain is to return to a sort of mysticism where every explanation is deferred; it is dogmatic and unscientific.
A more controversial example is the emergence of Dissociative Identity Disorder through a circuit of fantastical pop-culture representation in books and films, institutions in therapist seminars and official psychiatric bodies, and the ossification of the 'facts' of this new classification of people. All this together creates a double-movement of coding which works as follows:
A particular interpretation of a vague, nebulous phenomena gains precedence, and, with time, creates an identity with specific, essential attribute and binaries. "This is what you are."
A person begins to ascribe this identity to themselves, and in turn takes up these new attributes. "This is who I am."
This is of course not to say that mental illness 'isn't real' or whatever. Perception is no simple thing: affect is full of folly. But the expression of affect, and in turn its social circuit of interpretation is much, much more than something centered on a single ill individual.
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A pretty clear example of this is the The Truman Show delusion. It is pretty undeniable that socio-cultural reality effects delusions with them evolving (for the most part) from religious experiences, to radio waves, to microchip implants, and finally to reality television. To say that mental illness is just 'chemical imbalances' in the brain is to return to a sort of mysticism where every explanation is deferred; it is dogmatic and unscientific.
A more controversial example is the emergence of Dissociative Identity Disorder through a circuit of fantastical pop-culture representation in books and films, institutions in therapist seminars and official psychiatric bodies, and the ossification of the 'facts' of this new classification of people. All this together creates a double-movement of coding which works as follows:
This is of course not to say that mental illness 'isn't real' or whatever. Perception is no simple thing: affect is full of folly. But the expression of affect, and in turn its social circuit of interpretation is much, much more than something centered on a single ill individual.
Ian Hacking's essay Making Up People says it much better than I