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An interesting idea about the personal importance of constructing a consistent story.  I spent a significant amount of time with a patient suffering from advanced Alzheimer's.  Yes, I mean to use the word suffering.  The mental states he experienced caused him anguish and anxiety.  What I found interesting, was his attempt to mask his confusion.  He was a master at evading giving answers to simple questions.  He made use of such tactics as deflection and humor.  The level of sophistication of his strategies was impressive.  Yet, I wonder how much comfort they afforded him.  A lone storyteller?

It often seemed like he was too scared of criticism to share his own meaning or stories.  Throughout the course of his illness, he had learned to anticipate conflict between his story and the accepted, communal story or stories.  To a limited extent, he was conscious of his inability to defend, factually, his story.  Therefore, he chose not to share his personal story. 

It was not always so, earlier in the development of his disease, he much more comfortable sharing.  Perhaps this was because he perceived that his story was not significantly different from the “accepted story”.  As he encountered increasing opposition to his story, he began editing out the controversial elements.  There was never an attempt to resolve the conflict between the two stories.  In fact, his story was discriminated against on the basis of his material (physical) illness.  So he stopped participating in the storytelling activity. 

A storyteller without an audience is a sign of mental illness?  Or more generally, the lack of storytelling activity is mental illness.