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Thanks all for interesting conversation, both Monday night and here.  What particularly struck me is how hard it is to get one's head fully enough around the notion of "objectivity" as "shared subjectivity" to apply it effectively in concrete situations.  We look for explanations of depression and mental health conditions in terms of receptors and neurotransmitters because we want "objectivity" (ie "shared subjectivity"), but perhaps a lack of "shared subjectivity" is itself of the essence of many mental health conditions?   We want an "objective" (ie "shared subjectivity") criterion of mental health ("normalcy," "harmfulness" to others/self) when perhaps some degree of absence of "shared subjectivity" is essential for "mental health"? Interesting food for thought.  Perhaps "shared subjectivity" is useful in some contexts; it can productively unite groups of people in pursuit of particular goals.   But perhaps its less useful in others.  Maybe, as per last week, the more general aim is not to "figure out what's actually out there," nor to achieve "shared subjectivity" but rather to make use of multiple subjectivities to create understandings beyond those one starts with?  In that case, one needn't start with "shared subjectivities" but aspires to/has confidence in their emergence?  Perhaps, with regard to both depression and mental health generally, the important thing isn't the relative values and/or problems of existing "shared subjectivities" but rather the variety of different subjectivities and a commitment to finding out of them new "shared subjectivities"?  Perhaps the point of The Spirit Catches You When You Fall Down isn't that one cultural (or individual) "subjectivity" has to prevail but rather that out of multiple subjectivities new "shared subjectivities' can evolve?  

For more on the use of multiple subjectivities, see On beyond a critical stance.   For more on alternative ways to think about mental health, see Models of mental health: a critique and a prospectus, and for more on depression, see Exploring depression.  For more on depression as "adaptive," see Depression's evolutionary roots.