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I have been puzzling over many of the same issues Ryan brings up. I feel that a lot of what I have learned so far this semester has led me to feel that though we aren't even close to understanding all the complex functions of the brain, all of who we are is in indeed created and maintained by the structure of our brains. For a long time I have struggled to place the story teller; to really understand how it functions and how to comprehend it. We refer to it and utilize it in class as an autonomous part of us that picks and chooses from different signals from the unconscious to create a story – a description that is much more conceptual and philosophical than physiological. But then again we also place it in the neocortex, a *physical* part of the brain.

I think the story we are telling about the story teller is a very useful one given the current understanding - or lack there of I should say - of how consciousness works. However, I struggle with a debate between which is more effective, talk therapy that helps us to tell a new story, or drugs that alter brain chemistry, because it seems to me like comparing apples and oranges. Or rather, thinking we are comparing apples and oranges when really we are not.

When we talk about telling a new story, we are talking about changing attitudes, behaviors and cognitions. However I feel like we need to stop shying away from the view that talking about the physical basis for mental illness somehow diminishes its importance, and instead embrace it as truly empowering. Recent research shows more and more how talk therapies have similar physiological effects on the brain to drugs. - the story teller and drugs are both effecting the same kinds of changes in the brain, this is amazing! The more I learn about the physiological effects of talk therapy, the more I find it hard to talk in terms of the story teller, because it seems to be glossing over, as Ryan mentioned, the physical mechanisms in the brain for how it works. We know the story teller does effect changes in brain chemistry that can be measured through scientific tests, and I feel like this should prove once and for all that talk therapy and drugs are working towards the same goal. To say one is better than the other makes no sense to me – they are both methods for achieving the same goal, neither of which we know nearly enough about to be making nay kind of sweeping generalizations.

Similarly, being concerned that drugs are perhaps missing the “underlying cause” of a problem I feel could just as easily be said about talk therapy. Though talk therapy can certainly help us recognize some of the thoughts that are causing our mental states, perhaps there are issues in brain chemistry that the “story teller” simply wont ever be able to address. To be saying we are missing an underlying cause almost seems to go against so much of what this class has taught us –that there is no “right” way for the brain to be, and that underlying objective causes are perhaps better understood as subjective interpretations. Sorry if not all of this makes sense, it’s all still very jumbled in my mind!