Thanks for your post, LoneShaman. Though it is written generally, and though I initially interpreted it as a generic response to which my own response was not sought, I gather from another thread that it was in part directed at me, so I'll craft a respond after all, and as though it were personal, hoping that I'm not being too selfish or narcissistic in doing so.
Yes. That's true. I have been locked up for nothing more than behaving oddly according to societal standards. An example: I was standing on the verge of the road near a bridge in my town of residence, close to passing traffic. Somebody must have called the police, because they turned up, and, when they arrived, they questioned me as to what I was doing. I wasn't interested in talking to them, nor in accepting their ultimatum: let us take you back to your home or we will take you to the doctor's to be evaluated under the Mental Health Act. So, they (coercively) took me to the doctor's, and, because I was reluctant to talk to anybody, let alone him, he decided that I should be sectioned.
It's that easy to find your way into the labyrinth that is the mental health system.
I have discovered over the years that a major problem too is perceived accountability. Those involved in the mental health system are very keen to cover their asses. How does this apply to my example? If they had left me near the bridge, and a car had hit me, they believe that the public would have held them, and not me, responsible (after all, I was "mentally disordered", and thus wasn't responsible for my own actions). Nevermind that from my perspective, I retained personal responsibility - albeit from a different reality frame - and that it was my choice to behave as I was behaving - they still wanted to cover themselves on the assumption that they might be held responsible for any injury that might have occurred to me given that I, myself, was not responsible.
They basically don't recognise personal responsibility in those who are in a different frame of reality. We (those of us in different reality frames) "lack decision-making capacity", and this is the part of the Mental Health Act which they invoke to deny me (us) agency, and to treat us forcibly.
But on another level, I perceive the whole "mental health" trip as a game in the perverse rather than the fun sense: "Act in this way and you are free, but act in THAT way and you come under OUR control". They are just waiting for one of us to slip into THAT way of being/behaving, and then they hook their talons into us and drag us off to their little chambers (psychiatric wards).
So, if I were to sum up my response to your quoted words: I see it more as a system of control than as a fearful reaction. I don't think that the mental health system does fear us. It holds all of the cards. It is just waiting for us to reveal our own, so that it can suck us into its dread embrace. That said, your average member of society who is not a part of the mental health system very much might fear "odd" behaviour and thinking, and very well might "deliver us into their hands".
This is where I'm not entirely sure, man. I think that what most messed me up psychospiritually was taking psychoactive drugs which weren't good for me. Those drugs opened a portal in my mind which allowed malicious disembodied entities to target me. I am not sure I am so much of a "potential shaman" as a "foolish partaker of forbidden substances". But then again: during the time (as a young adult) when I sampled those substances, I was going through an intense period of awakening, the details of which I won't go into here. So, when I throw that into the mix, I have to wonder: if it hadn't gone pear-shaped, might it have gone exponential? And then, I have to wonder about the shamanic possibilities that you bring up. It might well be that I could have attained some degree of shamanic functioning before the darkness set in, whilst I was still exploring my awakening. Or maybe the darkness is a necessary part of the shamanic journey. Maybe we need to confront our own demons before we can confront the demons of those whom we would seek to heal. And I do seem to be confronted by demons.
Yes, there is no doubt that our culture gets it wrong. As I wrote above, I think our culture responds within the parameters of a system of control rather than of a system of education and liberation. Speaking personally, the mechanisms of control to which I have been subjected are outrageous.