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I am interested in the connection between our calling the I-function a storyteller and Freud's conception of the "talking cure" which involves a patient being treated through the construction of a personal narrative. This form of psychoanalysis depends upon a patient actively playing the role of storyteller. What I realized in class, however, is that a person is always a storyteller. It seems that Freud wants the patient to include more of the information in the cognitive unconscious in the storytelling. In other words, storytelling, when performed in a sort of deliberate, introspective way, can be a vehicle for uncovering and making sense of the cognitive unconscious. Freud seemed to believe that a person's sense of self and psychological state depends upon their story...the way they've integrated and woven their experiences together into a kind of coherency. 

As a writer, I was also interested in the idea that storytelling is an inherent part of humans. Writers seem to also tell stories on a conscious level. In addition, writers construct a believable fictional narrator by creating a storyteller that seems real and psychologically reasoned. This idea only affirmed my sense that creative writing requires an enormous amount of psychology.

 Finally, as a writer, I was interested in how the subjectivity and inconsistency of memory relates to the genre of memoir. It made me realize that memoir is only nonfiction in the way that it represents the author's current self. The memories of the past are dependent upon the writer's contemporary storyteller. It seems that the most valuable part of memoir is not in the recount of past experiences but in the expose of a person's "storyteller."