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Delighted to both "take issue" and seek "connections in shared perceptions," indeed to do the former in pursuit of the latter?

Along these lines, I too think "illness" has been (and may still be) a needed improvement in thinking about mental health; its certainly an improvement over some earlier ways of thinking about it. But it too has some problems, particularly in the realms of agency and encouraging agency and diversity and encouraging diversity. My guess is we're not actually so far apart on this at this point.

Nor, for that matter, are we, I suspect, so far apart on the "reality" issue either. There are indeed different worlds, and your three legged table story is a nice example. And we do indeed seek "shared reality," partly for the "comfort and reassurance" interpersonal connectedness provides. But the story of your grandmother, and the Echo Maker suggest there is something else involved as well. People may actually decline interpersonal "shared reality" and the associated "comfort and reassurance" when it doesn't resolve an intrapersonal conflict.

What we seem to seek is not just interpersonal agreement but intrapersonal agreement as well. And the two may push us in different directions. Is one or the other "healthier"? Or are they both perhaps not actually ways to achieve "comfort and reassurance" but rather motivators for our continuing exploration of new ways of being? Maybe the brain isn't designed "to make our lives easier," but rather to faciliate our lives as explorers?