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OK – once again excuse my tendency to roam around – but I am trying out a couple of different ideas.

I am inclined to agree with you that the “Observer” does not need to exist as a separate construct but I do wonder about it as a different pattern in the brain. My sense is that there is a different pattern going on when we are in an “Observer” stance and when we are in a “Story-Teller” stance. Of course there is a different pattern when we are playing piano as opposed to playing tennis, but somehow I think that this pattern difference can yield insights about these two cognitive stances.

I think one of the things that I have to understand better in your model is the relationship between the I-F and the Story Teller. IF I understood correctly the I-F arises to a certain extent out of the loop created by the story teller. That is our very sense of self arises from the construction of stories that help us interact with the world in creative ways. Reading your exchange The Art Historian and the Neurobiolgist /bb/artneuro/ I get the sense that you originally started talking about the I-F and then moved more to talking about the S-T.

One of the questions that this raises (I think somebody brought this up in class) is whether the I function interacts directly with the CU or if it only interacts with the ST?

Another interesting question to me is the relationship between language and stories. Are stories language dependent? Is I-Function language dependent?  My sense is no on both counts, I am sure you have written on this somewhere.

Still it would seem that to a certain extent most of our stories as adults are so intertwined with language that we almost can’t separate the story from the language – even at the primary story level. While “hurts” or “angry” are both very simple stories that most animals can have, it is very hard for people to not tell those stories in the context of language with all of its attendant baggage and associations. 

One interesting question for me would be is there any difference in that regard between stories that exist in language and stories that don’t exist in language.  My sense is that Jill Taylor http://drjilltaylor.com/ is trying to illustrate the difference between these two types of stories. I also believe that the drawing on the right side of the brain http://www.drawright.com/ might access this type of non-verbal story telling. I would be curious to hear more of your thoughts on language-based and non-language-based stories.