Creative Writing Class Welcomes Upper School Counselor Andrea Fleetham

The Creative Writing: Short Fiction class welcomed Andrea Fleetham, Upper School Counselor, for an interactive lecture on Freud and Jung. Students examined how Freud’s concepts of the id, ego, and superego provide a framework for understanding inner conflict while Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious opens pathways to archetypes that resonate across cultures and stories. 

The session also highlighted how the history of Western psychology is not a straight line but a branching tree, with theorists often disagreeing and diverging to form new schools of thought. This tension between competing visions of human behavior mirrors the complexities writers strive to capture in their characters. The students followed up the lecture with an analysis of The Cat in the Hat, uncovering how Seuss’s mischievous feline and other characters can be read as a case study in impulse, authority, and the negotiation of childhood independence.

About the experience, Andrea shared, “I love collaborating on this project because it brings together two of my favorite things: psychology and working with students. In this lesson, students explored two related but different psychological theories about what makes people ‘tick,’ opening the door to developing greater empathy and a deeper understanding of human nature. That insight not only helps students grow as individuals but also makes their writing more powerful and authentic. By connecting across disciplines this way, they’re also practicing what it means to create boldly—taking risks, experimenting with new ideas, and drawing on a deeper well of human understanding to feed their creativity.”

Building on this foundation, students will now research and present lectures on other influential theories, including attachment theory, Piaget’s stages of development, and social learning theory. By tracing psychological theory from Freud and Jung to contemporary models, students are discovering how the study of the human mind deepens the art of storytelling. 

The class plans to partner with psychology teacher Patty Thurlow to examine Eastern perspectives on the mind, drawing on traditions such as Buddhism’s focus on consciousness and detachment or Confucian thought on social harmony and identity. By comparing these worldviews with Western theories, students will gain a broader sense of how different cultures interpret the self, a perspective that promises to enrich their writing with greater nuance and depth.