Metaphor in Psychotherapy : A descriptive and prescriptive analysis [1 ed.] 9789027271617, 9789027202055

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Metaphor in Psychotherapy

Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication (MiLLC) The aim of the series is to publish theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary research on the effective use of metaphor in language and other modalities (including, for instance, visuals) for general or specific cognitive and communicative purposes. The aim of the series is to offer both fundamental and applied contributions to the state of the art. The series also invites proposals for inter-cultural and cross-cultural studies of metaphor in language, cognition, and communication. Room will be given as well to publications on related phenomena, such as analogy, metonymy, irony, and humor, as long as they are approached from a comparable perspective. The scope of the series comprises approaches from the humanities and the social and cognitive sciences, including philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, cognitive science, communication science, media studies, and discourse analysis. More focused attention may be paid to the role of metaphor in the domains of religion, literature and the arts, the media, politics, organization and management, law, economics, health, education, and science.

For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/milcc

Editor Gerard J. Steen

VU University Amsterdam

Editorial Board Frank Boers

Alan Cienki

Thomas Fuyin Li

Tony Berber Sardinha

Joep Cornelissen

Cornelia Müller

Erasmushogeschool Brussel Pontifical University of São Paulo

Lynne Cameron

The Open University

Daniel Casasanto MPI Nijmegen

VU University Amsterdam Leeds University Business School

Alice Deignan

Beihang University (BUAA) Europa Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez

Joe Grady

Elena Semino

University of Leeds University of California, Santa Cruz Cultural Logic, Providence

University of La Rioja, Logroño Lancaster University

Volume 1 Metaphor in Psychotherapy. A descriptive and prescriptive analysis by Dennis Tay

Metaphor in Psychotherapy A descriptive and prescriptive analysis

Dennis Tay The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

In collaboration with the Metaphor Lab.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tay, Dennis. Metaphor in Psychotherapy : A descriptive and prescriptive analysis / Dennis Tay.   p. cm. (Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication, issn 2210-4836 ; v. 1) Revision of author’s Ph.D thesis-University of Otago, 2011. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Metaphor. 2. Psychotherapy. 3. Discourse analysis. 4. Counseling. 5. Psycholinguistics. I. Title. P301.5.M48T39 2013 808’.032--dc23 2013018614 isbn 978 90 272 0205 5 (Hb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 7161 7 (Eb)

© 2013 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents chapter 1 Introduction: A metaphor renaissance 1.1 From language to cognition, and back  1 1.2 Metaphors in psychotherapy  3 1.3 Towards a descriptive and prescriptive analysis: Aims and outline  5 1.4 Remarks on methodology and data  8 1.4.1 Data sources and transcription conventions  9 1.4.2 Metaphor identification and description  11

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chapter 2 The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse 13 2.1 Introduction  13 2.2 Layers of context in psychotherapeutic discourse  14 2.3 The ideational resources of metaphors  16 2.3.1 Embodied knowledge  18 2.3.2 Cultural knowledge  20 2.3.3 Individual-specific knowledge  22 2.3.4 Socio-cultural situatedness and metaphor  23 2.4 The rhetorical development of metaphor  25 2.4.1 Correspondence: Systematic mappings between domains  27 2.4.2 Class inclusion: Extraction of superordinate categories  28 2.4.3 Career-of-metaphor: Integrating correspondence and class inclusion  31 2.4.4 Conceptual blending: On metaphoric creativity  33 2.5 The consistency, variability, and variation of metaphor in discourse  35 2.6 The co-text of metaphoric expressions in discourse  38 2.7 The prescriptive aim: Contributions to psychotherapy  40 2.7.1 Uniformity and depth: Rethinking the mechanism of metaphor  41 2.8 Summary  45 chapter 3 The ideational resources of metaphors: Embodied, cultural, and individual-specific knowledge47 3.1 Introduction  47 3.2 ‘Stabilities’ in metaphoric discourse  48

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3.3 Analysis  50 3.3.1 Background of therapist and patient  50 3.3.2 Session 1: “There’s this giant wall around me”  51 3.3.3 Session 2: “I am Sara”  53 3.3.4 Session 3: “The little boy is locked up in me!”  56 3.3.5 Session 4: “I want to give birth”  62 3.4 The prescriptive aim: Applying knowledge of complementarity  66 3.4.1 The biopsychosocial model of metaphor therapy  66 3.4.2 The 7-step interview protocol  68 3.5 Summary  73 chapter 4 Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors 75 4.1 Introduction  75 4.2 Metaphor types as a discourse derivative  76 4.3 The alignment metaphor type for ‘conceptual explication’  77 4.3.1 Conceptual explication in psychotherapy  80 4.4 The category metaphor type for ‘principle highlighting’  83 4.4.1 Principle highlighting in psychotherapy  85 4.5 Shifting discourse circumstances in psychotherapy  87 4.5.1 Global-to-specific shift in discourse focus  88 4.5.2 Pragmatic complexities: A case of boundary violation  91 4.6 The prescriptive aim: Applying knowledge of metaphor types  94 4.6.1 Two protocols for developing patient metaphors  95 4.6.2 Metaphor types as different bridges between sources and targets  98 4.7 Summary  104 chapter 5 Metaphoric consistency and variability as therapeutic discourse strategies 105 5.1 Introduction  105 5.2 Categories of metaphoric consistency and variability  107 5.3 Analysis  108 5.3.1 Metaphoric consistency  108 5.3.2 Metaphoric variability: Same source, different targets  110 5.3.3 Same target, different sources  113 5.3.4 Switching between different sources and targets  116 5.4 The prescriptive aim: Towards a consideration of the therapeutic functions of metaphor variability  119 5.5 Summary  121



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chapter 6 From therapeutic discourse to the discourse of therapy: therapy is a journey as a discourse metaphor 123 6.1 Introduction  123 6.2 Motivation and specification of therapy is a journey at four levels  125 6.2.1 Level 1: The primary and conceptual metaphoric level  126 6.2.2 Level 2: Theorisation  127 6.2.3 Level 3: Therapist training models: The river and the road journey  129 6.2.4 Level 4: Actual therapeutic talk  134 6.3 Summary of journey metaphors across the four levels  142 6.4 The prescriptive aim: Discourse metaphors as feedback  145 6.5 Summary  148 chapter 7 The co-text of metaphors: Discourse markers as signalling devices 7.1 Introduction  149 7.2 Signalling/tuning devices in the co-text and context  150 7.3 The co-occurrence of discourse markers and metaphors  151 7.4 Analysis  152 7.5 The prescriptive aim: Leveraging upon the cognitive and social functions of discourse markers  164 7.6 Summary  166 Appendix  167

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chapter 8 Summary, emergent themes and future directions 171 8.1 Introduction  171 8.2 The descriptive and prescriptive aims: A synthesised summary  171 8.3 Emergent themes  174 8.3.1 Metaphors operate over different scales of therapeutic activity  174 8.3.2 Metaphors fulfil ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions  174 8.3.3 Metaphor use and management as both ‘science’ and ‘art’  176 8.4 Future directions for metaphor research and psychotherapeutic practice  177 8.4.1 Other approaches to metaphor in psychotherapy  177 8.4.2 Turning therapeutic implications into actions  181 References183 Name index

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Subject index

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chapter 1

Introduction A metaphor renaissance 1.1 From language to cognition, and back Most people familiar with metaphor theory and research know how its frontiers were radically advanced several decades ago by what was called the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor (CMT) (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999). While it seems clear that metaphor, traditionally understood as a comparison between two dissimilar things, must at some level involve some sort of cognitive processing, the most striking message from CMT theorists was that metaphors are primarily cognitive, and only secondarily linguistic. Far from being idiosyncratic tokens of linguistic creativity used in political speeches and poems, the metaphoric expressions we utter are claimed to be a necessary result of our natural tendency to think metaphorically. Classic examples used by CMT theorists include expressions such as look how far we’ve come, we’re at a dead-end, we’re spinning our wheels in this relationship, and a principally infinite number of other expressions which systematically depict love in terms of embarking on a concrete journey (Lakoff, 1993: 206). Based on the powerful observation that metaphoric expressions seem to be widely and conventionally used across different languages and for a range of different concepts (Abdulmoneim, 2006; Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2008; Yu, 2009, among others), the most important claim of CMT is that metaphors at the level of language are manifestations of fundamental conceptual associations between different conceptual domains. The implications of this claim for the relationship between language and thought have triggered a great deal of interdisciplinary research, particularly in the cognitive and psychological sciences, which remain productive and influential today (Gibbs, 2008). A large part of CMT’s appeal has been its bold realignment of the analytic lenses from actual metaphoric tokens of language to acontextual metaphoric schemas of thought. This “cognitive turn” in metaphor scholarship and other relevant cognitive sciences (H. Gardner, 1985) can rightly be described as a paradigm shift in the Kuhnian (1962) sense. Nevertheless, for those familiar with more traditional characterisations, it is difficult to imagine how the rhetorical, pragmatic, and discursive qualities of metaphor expounded over the ages by Aristotle, I. A. Richards, and John Searle, among others, could thus be rendered irrelevant. Researchers sceptical of CMT’s

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wholesale attention on the cognitive roots of metaphor often point out a seeming contradiction within its central tenets. If metaphor is indispensable to both language and thought, as repeatedly claimed in CMT, it is surely important for theories of metaphor to be grounded upon its manifest characteristics across different contexts of communicative and symbolic activity, and to take all the “messy realities” (Eubanks, 1999: 174) of metaphor in diverse scenarios of actual text and talk into rightful account. However, many linguistic examples offered by CMT theorists as evidence for the cognitive reality of metaphors have been introspectively generated, appear alien to English language corpora, and are generally insensitive towards the social, cultural, and interactional qualities which inhere in the act of using metaphors in real life situations for real life purposes. The following comments, drawn from different sources but convergent upon the same broad point, are sufficiently illustrative. Metaphors… always appear in the context not merely of surrounding words, but also of a particular communicative interchange, social situation and cultural setting. However, few theories have accounted adequately for the role of the social and conversational context in recognizing, using and understanding metaphors.  (Ritchie, 2006: 4) What I’m arguing for… is the centrality of the contextual nature of language in use; the human and discourse context of language use is inherent in the joint construction of discourse goals and in the use of metaphor to achieve these goals. Processing metaphorical language takes place in context and draws on the discourse expectations of participants. (Cameron, 1999b: 25) (CMT) is an approach… that understates the variability in the use of metaphors while overstating their role in constructing understanding.  (Strauss & Quinn, 1997: 141)

The proverbial gauntlet thus thrown down proclaims that, for all its valuable insights into our cognitive architecture, theorisation of metaphors as conceptual structures “in the head” must be complemented by an examination of the motivations, processes, and consequences of metaphor deployment “out there” in the social world (Gibbs, 1999b; Zanotto, Cameron, & Cavalcanti, 2008). Such empirical scrutiny is furthermore not necessarily purely descriptive, but could shed theoretical light of its own on the nature of metaphor (e.g. Caballero, 2003, 2006; Cameron & Deignan, 2006; Cameron et al., 2009; Deignan, 2008). Researchers have since responded accordingly by examining metaphors in subject matters as varied as economics, politics, art, science, and advertising, in an effort to substantiate, refine, or otherwise refute theoretical claims advanced by the cognitivist paradigm. Does the excursion of metaphor scholarship from language and discourse to cognition, and back again, represent two successive and contrastive paradigm



Chapter 1.  Introduction

shifts? It would perhaps be more appropriate to characterise the present landscape as a renaissance, in that the revived focus on the contextual dimension promises to actively engage the cognitive dimension to yield a more holistic empirical and theoretical understanding of metaphor in language, cognition, and communication (Musolff & Zinken, 2009; Steen, 2011a). As metaphor theory continues to mature on the basis of a deeper descriptive understanding of metaphors in actual use, some researchers have begun to speak of adopting a more prescriptive perspective traditionally eschewed in much of linguistics and discourse analysis. A prescriptive, or practical approach, invites us to consider how theoretical advancements can lead to more adroit and judicious use of metaphors in the many discursively constituted activities in the “real world” (Low, Todd, Deignan, & Cameron, 2010). With a case study of the real world discourse context of psychotherapy, I hope that this book can convince readers of the relevance and exigency of understanding metaphors both descriptively and prescriptively. 1.2 Metaphors in psychotherapy A Google image search of the term ‘psychotherapy’ seems to suggest a popular stereotype of distressed, couch-ridden individuals being hypnotised or treated in mysterious ways. Far closer to the truth is that psychotherapy is an evidence based mental health resource (Lambert & Ogles, 2004) widely practiced in many contemporary societies, involving naturalistic verbal communication between therapists and patients.1 Also dubbed the “talking cure”, psychotherapy is more formally defined by Meltzoff and Kornreich (1970: 4) as the informed and planful application of techniques derived from established psychological principles… with the intention of assisting individuals to modify such personal characteristics as feelings, values, attitudes, and behaviours which are judged by the therapist to be maladaptive or maladjustive.

The clinical use and management of metaphors has long interested therapists (Barlow, Pollio, & Fine, 1977; Kopp, 1995; Siegelman, 1990; Stott, Mansell, Salkovskis, Lavender, & Cartwright-Hatton, 2010), with Arlow (1979) going to the extent of claiming that psychotherapy is an inherently metaphoric enterprise. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid not only to the general use of 1. Psychotherapy practitioners are referred to as psychotherapists, therapists, or counsellors. Individuals seeking treatment are referred to as clients or patients, the latter term being more common in hospitals and other medical settings. I will use the terms therapist and patient throughout this book.

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metaphors in counselling, but in dealing with specific issues such as self esteem and career management (Amundson, 2010; Inkson, 2006). Psychotherapy represents an exemplary context where both discursive and cognitivist approaches to metaphor are eminently relevant. As a source of spontaneous talk conducted under specific (clinical) circumstances, it provides the exact type of data which highlights “the centrality of the contextual nature of language in use” (Cameron, 1999b: 25). At the same time, therapeutic interest in metaphor has been amplified by the cognitivist claim that metaphoric expressions reflect metaphoric ways of thinking about the many abstract concepts in our physical, emotional, and social worlds (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The possibility that our conceptual systems are metaphorically structured holds obvious implications for therapeutic schools of thought which attribute psychological problems to how we conceptualise our life situations, such as the influential Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) paradigm (J. Beck, 1995). It is also noteworthy how theories of psychotherapy and metaphor have both been influenced by the broader philosophical tenets of constructivism, which assert that language in use reflects our subjective construal of reality, rather than an objectively existent world of immutable objects, attributes and relations (Lakoff, 1987; Mahoney, 1988; Neimeyer & Mahoney, 1995; Taylor & MacLaury, 1995). Within psychotherapy research, therapists and patients have been observed and encouraged to use metaphors for a variety of reasons. Metaphors facilitate rapport building between therapists and patients, the conceptualisation and communication of abstract emotional states, and the discussion of patients’ issues in less direct and hence less distressing ways (Lyddon, Clay, & Sparks, 2001). The use of metaphors in psychotherapy and the general conceptualisation of suffering are in fact believed to be necessary, given the inherent difficulty involved in arriving at intersubjective, literal descriptions of the latter (Kirmayer, 1992; McMullen, 1996; Radley & Chamberlain, 2001; Semino, 2010). It has been suggested that metaphor use, motivated by the complexities inherent in psychotherapy, can be treated as a “common factor” (J. Frank, 1971, 1982) which transcends the theoretical assumptions of different therapeutic systems and schools of thought.2 This is envisioned to help bring these systems closer together in their common quest for the betterment of human lives (Kopp, 1995; Wickman, Daniels, White, & Fesmire, 1999). It seems obvious that the subject of metaphor in psychotherapy ought to have brought about close collaboration between linguists and therapists. However, the differing descriptive and prescriptive concerns of linguists and therapists position the two groups on different philosophical starting points (Chaika, 2000), with the 2. These include cognitive-behavioural therapy, interpersonal therapy, relational therapy, and psychodynamic therapy (just to name a few), from which many sub-varieties have further evolved (Prochaska & Norcross, 2009).



Chapter 1.  Introduction

consequence that “the two literatures have grown without significant coordination” (McCurry & Hayes, 1992: 764). Linguists typically do not assert that certain ways of using language are better than others, while it is the primary task of therapists to improve the “talking cure” to achieve better treatment outcomes. An example of the descriptivist caution against venturing into prescriptive grounds can be seen from Silverman (1997: 212), who remarked in his conversational analysis of AIDS counselling discourse that as a non-counsellor, “it is not for me to take a position on the therapeutic … implications of the practices I have identified”. In similar spirit, apart from the obligatory citation of seminal publications, therapists with an avowed interest in metaphor have seemed relatively indifferent towards developments in the provinces of metaphor theory (i.e. psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and discourse analysis). One possible reason is the belief that such developments do not directly address the clinical efficacy of metaphor, or are not readily translatable to practical advice on how to use and manage metaphors in the clinic (Ahammed, 2010: 249). However, as Teasdale (1993: 342) sensibly reminds us, progress in psychotherapy runs the risk of “grind(ing) to a halt” if therapists continue to marginalise or overlook research findings in the domains of inquiry closely related to their practice, especially the linguistic and cognitive sciences. Prominent psychologists Anderson and Goolishian (1988) once described therapists as “master conversational artists” who are simultaneously participants and managers of the therapeutic conversation. If therapists are indeed masters of dialogue and caretakers of the mind, and metaphor is a phenomenon which straddles language, thought, and communication, there is surely much room for metaphor researchers to contribute meaningfully towards the psychotherapeutic enterprise, even if the exact mechanism(s) connecting metaphor use and therapeutic breakthroughs are still some distance away from being discovered and fully explicated (Stott et al., 2010). 1.3 Towards a descriptive and prescriptive analysis: Aims and outline The primary aim of this book is to examine the characteristics of metaphors in psychotherapeutic discourse from the perspective of several key theoretical aspects in metaphor research. It is closely followed by the secondary aim of suggesting how these aspects of metaphor theory, seldom explicitly discussed in psychotherapy research, can be applied to enhance the clinical use and management of metaphors. These complementary aims, as a response to the aforementioned calls for metaphor research to be more practically relevant, find in psychotherapy a robust, exigent, and exciting domain of investigation.

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It should be clear how the primary and secondary aims respectively constitute the avowed descriptive and prescriptive analyses of this book. For this reason, I will refer to them as the descriptive aim and prescriptive aim throughout the book. Each chapter, focusing on a particular theoretical aspect in metaphor research, will first address the descriptive aim by discussing how the characteristics of metaphors in psychotherapeutic discourse provide theoretically relevant insights. This will be followed by the prescriptive aim, where I attempt to suggest how these various aspects of metaphor theory can inform the therapeutic use and management of metaphors. A brief outline of the chapters follows. Chapter 2 elaborates my main claim that analysing metaphors in psychotherapy potentially benefits both metaphor theory and psychotherapeutic practice. I first characterise the nature of psychotherapeutic discourse along several key contextual dimensions, or layers of context, such as the individual patient’s life history, the theoretical assumptions of the therapist, and the linguistic co-text of therapeutic talk. I explain how these layers of context influence the characteristics of metaphors deployed by therapists and patients, thus making therapeutic talk a rich source of data for theoretical concerns within the province of metaphor research. I then explain how aspects of metaphor theory could in turn address perceptible gaps in the therapeutic literature on metaphor, and potentially contribute to psychotherapeutic practice. Chapter 3 addresses the first theoretical concern, the nature of the ideational resources people use to construct metaphoric source-target associations, otherwise discussed as the motivation (Lakoff, 1987; Radden & Panther, 2004) of metaphors. Motivation refers to the grounds upon which a source concept is associated with a target concept to produce a felicitous metaphor. While there has been considerable debate over whether source-target associations are primarily motivated by embodied, socio-cultural, or individual experience (Kövecses, 2010b), my case study of four near-consecutive psychotherapeutic sessions illustrates how therapist and patient creatively exploit these ideational resources in a functionally complementary way to define and elaborate a therapeutic problem-solution framework. Chapter 4 examines the rhetorical extension of metaphors by therapists and patients. It is largely based upon Wee’s (2005a) framework of metaphor types, which exemplifies a seldom seen methodological interaction between psycholinguistic and discourse analytic approaches to metaphor. The framework recasts psycholinguistic models of metaphor processing as different rhetorical strategies of metaphor production, based on whether one is attempting to highlight correspondences between source and target concepts (Lakoff, 1993), or superordinate categories scoping over both (Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999). I show how Wee’s implicit assumption that there is a one-to-one match between particular strategies and particular discourse objectives needs to be revised in light of psychotherapeutic examples, in which



Chapter 1.  Introduction

rapidly shifting discourse circumstances are better accounted for in terms of correspondingly dynamic (Cameron et al., 2009) shifts in metaphor types. Whereas Chapter 3 suggests that metaphors are extended and elaborated in therapeutically useful ways, and Chapter 4 shows the dynamic nature of this elaboration, Chapters 5 and 6 highlight the phenomena of metaphor variability and variation. I distinguish between variability and variation in that the former describes switching between different sources and targets within a unit of discourse, while the latter describes how highly conventional conceptual metaphors such as life is a journey can have variant instantiations across different languages and discourse communities (Kövecses, 2005). For the former case, I analyse examples of how switches are motivated by therapeutically relevant functions, such as to conceptualise a problematic target issue with multiple, complementary sources. In the latter case, I examine the varying instantiations of the conceptual metaphor therapy is a journey as it is used across the text and talk of theoretical psychotherapy models, therapist pedagogy, and actual therapy sessions. Chapter 7 provides a different perspective as it investigates the co-textual elements surrounding metaphors, rather than metaphoric expressions themselves. I focus specifically on examples where discourse markers such as you know and I mean (Fraser, 1999; Schiffrin, 2001) occur at strategic junctures within extended metaphors in therapeutic talk, such as the explicit statement of a cross-domain mapping, or a superordinate category (cf. Chapter 4). Discourse markers may therefore play an important role in the signalling (Cameron & Deignan, 2003; Goatly, 1997) of extended metaphors, as they draw attention not to metaphoricity per se, but to key junctures of their development in therapeutic talk. As mentioned, the latter halves of Chapters 3–7 will also discuss how respective insights gleaned from the undertaken discourse analytic approach (i.e. the descriptive aim) bear points of application for the use and management of metaphors in psychotherapy (i.e. the prescriptive aim). These points of application extend over a considerable range, from practical enhancements to existing “metaphor therapy” (Kopp, 1995) protocols to the process of obtaining clinical feedback (Claiborn & Goodyear, 2005) in the construction of metaphorically constituted theoretical models of psychotherapy. Chapter 8 concludes the book with (i) a synthesised summary of the analyses under both the descriptive and prescriptive aims; (ii) a highlighting of emergent themes regarding metaphors in psychotherapy which would not have been visible from the perspective of individual, modular chapters, and (iii) suggestions of future directions which capitalise on the present findings, both for metaphor research and psychotherapeutic practice.

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1.4 Remarks on methodology and data This book is qualitative in orientation and is not an exhaustive characterisation of metaphor in the psychotherapy genre, which would require both qualitative and quantitative analyses. There will be no ready answers to questions such as the frequency of occurrence of different source and/or target concepts, or the percentage of metaphor use by therapists versus patients. I shall elaborate towards the end of the book, in Section 8.4.1, the complementary value of a quantitative approach for the present research questions. For now, I would like to invoke the distinction between a genre study and a genre-based study to justify the present qualitative emphasis. Genre studies are broadly speaking concerned with exhaustive descriptions of specific phenomena within the genre, while genre-based studies use data from some selected genre to illustrate wider issues which are not necessarily tied to it. Genre studies of metaphor (e.g. Charteris-Black, 2000; Koller, 2004) attempt to understand how the dominant topic(s) and purpose(s) of a discourse genre (e.g. business, political discourse) determine the type, frequency, and functions of metaphors therein, across an ideally representative sample of text and/or talk. This book, which can be considered a genre-based study, takes instead aspects of metaphor theory as its point of departure, and investigates how particular instances of metaphor use in therapeutic talk affirm, extend, or challenge existing theoretical understanding. There is therefore no suggestion that the analysed instances constitute a representative sample of the psychotherapy genre. It also follows that my recommendations under the prescriptive aim of this book will remain speculative at this point of time. As with any other discourse genre where metaphor research bears prescriptive implications, the extent to which recommendations made by metaphor researchers eventually translate to practical gains will depend on the extent of follow-up testing and feedback from practitioners of that genre (i.e. psychotherapists). In terms of selecting appropriate therapy transcripts to be analysed, then, I will adopt an approach halfway between what Deignan (2008: 282) described as corpus based and corpus driven. In their prototypical forms, corpus based research analyse material preselected from the corpus in order to test preconceived hypotheses, while corpus driven research begins with no assumptions about what would be found. This book is corpus based in that it begins by broadly establishing the contextual parameters which are assumed to shape metaphors in therapeutic talk (Chapter 2), but is also corpus driven in that a clearer understanding of these contextual elements can only emerge upon deep examination of the transcripts, which in turn reveals new areas of analytic interest.



Chapter 1.  Introduction

1.4.1 Data sources and transcription conventions Although linguists and psychotherapists have collaborated in areas such as phonetic transcription (Pittenger, Hockett, & Danehy, 1960) and kinesic behaviour (body language) analysis (Scheflen, 1973), linguistic analyses of psychotherapeutic talk have not been as forthcoming. One major impediment against any analysis of psychotherapeutic discourse is the issue of consent from both therapists and patients. Psychotherapy sessions are after all a time when highly sensitive issues are discussed, and not many people would be comfortable with the publication of such contents even under the promise of anonymity. Some patients who are in a vulnerable state at the beginning of therapy, and/or wish to express gratefulness towards their therapists may initially provide consent, but come to regret their decision at a later stage. Many therapists also regard it as a matter of personal responsibility to safeguard the privacy of their patients. Unless therapists themselves double up as researchers (Crowe & Luty, 2005; Lewis, 1995) or research collaborators (Ferrara, 1991, 1994), the confidential nature of psychotherapy further renders it difficult to conduct any sort of direct ethnographic research. In the small number of ethnographic studies which have been conducted in several outpatient clinics in America and Europe (Bloor, McKeganey, & Fonkert, 1988; Gubrium, 1992), researchers’ observations of therapeutic proceedings have been limited to “the background of ongoing talk and interaction” (Gubrium, 1992: 245). Consequently, although we might expect many people today to have some generic awareness of what psychotherapy is about, very few would be familiar with what is actually being said in therapy, or how “talking to a stranger can be beneficial to mental health” (Ferrara, 1994: 3). Resources are however far from completely unavailable to those not directly involved with psychotherapy. Since the 1970s, a growing number of psychotherapists have been consistently recording and transcribing their clinical interactions with patients, which provides non-clinicians with a valuable glimpse into therapeutic processes. This expanding archive of data, known as Counselling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works, is published online by Alexander Street Press (www.alexanderstreet.com). It currently contains more than 2,000 transcripts of actual sessions organised into pertinent categories such as the year of therapy, the therapeutic school of thought, the diagnosed psychological condition(s), and the various therapy-patient pairs involved. The transcripts “adhere to the American Psychological Association’s ethics guidelines for use and anonymity”, and are selected “under the direction of an editorial board of distinguished practitioners and academics”.3 It is hoped that the present work will 3. From www.alexanderstreet.com. Apart from transcripts of actual sessions, the website also contains other resources such as textbooks, letters, autobiographies, and video re-enactments

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raise the awareness of linguists, discourse analysts, and other interested researchers towards this useful resource. The electronic nature of these transcripts should also facilitate the building of corpora for researching other aspects of psychotherapeutic discourse (Baker, 2006). Since I am not focusing on how metaphor use relates with any of the existing transcript categories, my approach is to (i) limit the number of analysed transcripts to 20 randomly selected therapist-patient pairs, each ranging from 5 to 20 hourly sessions (yielding a total of 253 transcripts); and (ii) manually examine the transcripts for instances of metaphor use relevant to the theoretical aspects of interest. In the course of examination, some parts of the data pointed towards other unconsidered theoretical aspects, which were then incorporated into the scope of the book. This eventually led to the inclusion of additional illustrative transcripts from Kopp (1995) and Ferrara (1994). I would like to thank the publishers of all the aforementioned sources for their kind permission to use and reproduce the data for this book. As far as possible, transcription conventions originally used in the data sources have been preserved. Some conventions were added or removed in accordance with the aims and scope of the analysis, and to ensure consistency across all transcripts used. These are detailed with examples below. Preserved conventions – Square brackets [] followed by (ph) to indicate the transcriber’s approximation of an unclear segment of speech E.g. Therapist: Yeah, I mean [it’s your around] (ph) reading… – Round brackets () to indicate paralinguistic cues and other transcriber comments E.g. (laughs), (chuckling), (inaudible), (audio gap) – (patient name) in place of patients’ real names to preserve anonymity E.g. Patient: I’ll start saying, stop it (patient name), stop it (patient name). – Three dots ‘…’ to indicate significant pauses E.g. Patient: Well… I guess that’s not right – Asterisks to indicate potentially offensive material E.g. Patient: it’s always so f***ing calculated, you know – Hyphens to indicate topic switches within a sentence E.g. Patient: Last year, this is really – no – can I just tell you?

of selected sessions. All contents are copyrighted and require a paid subscription, although trial subscriptions are available to institutions.



Chapter 1.  Introduction

Added conventions – All participants uniformly referred to as ‘therapist’ and ‘patient’, in place of variants such as ‘counsellor’ and ‘client’ – Line numbers before conversational turns for easy in-text referencing Removed conventions – Overlaps, interruptions, intonation contours etc., as outlined by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974). The decision to omit these features is not an a priori judgement of their non-relevance, but is made on the practical grounds that very few transcripts from the data sources have actually used them. In cases where they are used (e.g. Ferrara, 1994: 139–141), they did not have a significant bearing on the theoretical issues under consideration. 1.4.2 Metaphor identification and description In this book, I subscribe to an overarching definition of metaphor as “the phenomenon whereby we talk, and potentially, think about something in terms of something else” (Semino, 2008: 1). This definition resembles the standard cognitivist view of metaphor as a conceptualisation device (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999), where some target domain/concept/entity (e.g. love) is construed in terms of a source counterpart (e.g. journeys). However, germane to the analysis of actual text and talk, it emphasises the manifestation of metaphors at the level of language, and does not commit explicitly to their underlying cognitive reality (cf. Gibbs, 1999a: 42–43). Semino’s definition captures the gist of metaphor and provides a reasonable basis for determining the metaphoricity of text and talk. It will be used to guide the identification of metaphors throughout the book, although each chapter is intended to profile slightly different ways in which metaphors can be characterised and developed. In Chapter 3, I will be concerned with describing a highly imaginative metaphoric scenario (Grady, Oakley, & Coulson, 1999) in which target entities (i.e. the patient and his emotional states) are depicted in terms of progressively introduced source entities. Chapters 4 and 7 consider how explicitly stated metaphoric comparisons (e.g. bi-polar illness is being a balloon) are elaborated in different ways according to the discourse objective(s) motivating the comparison. Chapter 5 focuses on linguistic expressions which demonstrate the interplay between different source and target concepts, while Chapter 6 postulates a therapy is a journey conceptual metaphor and analyses its variation across the psychotherapeutic discourse community. On the whole, the analyses will therefore not be hinged upon procedurally ascertaining the (non)-metaphoricity of individual lexical units (Pragglejaz Group, 2007; Steen, Krennmayr, Dorst, Herrmann, & Kaal, 2010), but will instead pay greater attention to the theoretical and clinical implications arising from clear cut cases of metaphor use in therapeutic talk.

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The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse 2.1 Introduction Received pragmatics wisdom makes it seem a truism that the characteristics of metaphors, just like many other elements of language and communication, are modulated by the contexts of their production and comprehension. The inherent diversity of metaphor means that the study of any genre, situation, or context in which metaphors are used should likewise be deemed inherently insightful, when considered against the descriptive aim of this book. It has furthermore been shown that analyses of metaphors in domains as diverse as religion (Evola, 2008a), architecture (Caballero, 2003, 2006), and pedagogy (Cameron, 2003), just to name a few, often accomplish the objective of revealing and addressing gaps in existing metaphor theory. This chapter argues for the like value of studying metaphors in the multifaceted genre of psychotherapeutic discourse. I will explain how psychotherapy, a verbally constituted activity embedded in multiple layers of context, provides robust data for the interrogation of various theoretical aspects of metaphors. I then turn to the prescriptive aim of this book, highlighting that an especially salient prescriptive dimension inheres in psychotherapy compared to other commonly examined discourse genres (science, politics, economics, literature etc). Therapists of different theoretical persuasions since the pioneering days of psychoanalysis have long recognised that the astute use and management of metaphors could benefit patients (Freud, 1915; Lenrow, 1966; Sharpe, 1950). Although many have attempted to theorise about metaphor use in psychotherapy, progress in understanding its therapeutic effect has been fraught with methodological and conceptual difficulties. There is first and foremost a lack of consensus regarding the definition of metaphor (Long & Lepper, 2008), which has impeded meaningful comparisons between different studies. Furthermore, in looking for global causal mechanisms between metaphor use and therapeutic change, therapists have been noticeably indifferent towards theoretical advancements in metaphor research, and have tended to overlook the nuanced characteristics of metaphors in actual therapeutic talk (Teasdale, 1993). It has been suggested that a discourse analytic approach grounded in metaphor theory, while not primarily concerned with articulating any mechanism of therapeutic change, might actually turn out to be more insightful for therapists (McMullen, 1996, 2008). I therefore want to explore how aspects of

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metaphor theory elaborated by discourse analysts and metaphor researchers can meaningfully inform the clinical use and management of metaphors. 2.2 Layers of context in psychotherapeutic discourse If we agree with Riikonen and Vataja’s (1999) sceptical verdict that psychotherapeutic talk is not significantly different from ‘ordinary conversation’ (whatever this might mean), we might expect to find nothing particularly remarkable about the metaphors used therein. McMullen’s (1996: 252) observation about the frequency of metaphors in therapy which go beyond the prosaic and conventional, however, would have us hesitate in doubting its distinct quality. During psychotherapy, people struggle to find words to capture difficult-todescribe sensations, emotions, psychological states, and views of self. In their struggle, they often rely on figurative expressions as a way to convey what they want to say both to themselves and to the therapist.

McMullen (1996: 251) clearly delineates psychotherapy from ordinary talk and describes it as a “particularly fertile context” for metaphor study, a conclusion shared among other discourse analysts and metaphor researchers (Ferrara, 1994; Kövecses, 2001, 2005; Lakoff, 2001). The “struggle to find words” and consequent reliance on metaphors is furthermore not just characteristic of patients, but of therapists as well. Beyond McMullen’s remarks about the prevalence and basic functions of metaphor, a deeper examination of the nature of psychotherapeutic activity reveals many contextual characteristics – what I call “layers of context” – all of which can influence and induce (Kövecses, 2010b) what, how, and why metaphors are used. These characteristics are not themselves new to therapeutic theorisation. In fact, they comprise part of the circumstantial backdrop against which psychopathological principles are contextualised and applied. What would be new from a discourse analytic perspective, however, is to understand how they motivate, constrain, or otherwise shape metaphor use and management in psychotherapy. I suggest the following as comprising the major layers of context in psychotherapeutic discourse (cf. Wohl, 1989): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The context of the individual patient’s life history and subjective experiences The socio-cultural context of therapy and its participants The theoretical context of therapy The interactional context between therapist and patient The co-text of therapeutic talk



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

Psychotherapy is essentially about resolving issues faced by the individual patient (or individual patients within a group), and the metaphoric sources and targets used are as likely to be drawn from highly personalised experiences, as they are from conventional conceptual metaphors (Kövecses, 2001). The pool of ideational resources available for constructing metaphors ranges from ephemeral recollections, as in the case of dreams (Freud, 1915), to organised memories of personal experience, which psychologists call autobiographical memories (Brewer, 1986; Rubin, 1996). Pertinent to the fundamental issue of culture in psychotherapy (Tseng, Chang, & Nishizono, 2005), individuals also have recourse to shared cultural understandings (Strauss & Quinn, 1997) and conventional conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) when construing and communicating their experiences. While recent theories attempt to integrate the roles of individual, socio-cultural, and embodied experience in constructing metaphors (e.g. Ritchie, 2009), not much has been said about how they interact in purposive discourse contexts such as psychotherapy, and collectively contribute to the progression of discourse objectives. Just as there are various theories of psychological conditions, the therapeutic process itself is variously conceptualised by different schools of thought. The theoretical context within which every therapy session takes place bears under-examined implications for the way metaphors are used (including whether metaphors should be used at all). Besides looking at metaphors used in therapy, there is also the issue of metaphors as “framing devices” (Zinken, Hellsten, & Nerlich, 2008) of therapy, in cases where idealised therapeutic processes are theorised and communicated via metaphor. Borrowing the terminology of Gee (2005), psychotherapy can thus be regarded as a discourse with both a “small and big D”, where the former refers to actual instances of therapeutic talk, and the latter refers to more abstract conceptualisations and theoretical constructs. An interesting and therapeutically relevant question is whether metaphoric framing devices remain invariant, or exhibit degrees of modification or variation as they are transmitted down the different levels of a particular therapeutic school of thought, or discourse community. Individuals situated at each of these ‘levels’, which include theorists, therapist trainers, and ultimately, therapists and patients themselves, subscribe to the same framing device(s) which partially define their therapeutic orientation, but can also modify them to accommodate their particular discursive needs. Last but not least, as a discourse genre in which meaning is often spontaneously and collaboratively constructed (Ferrara, 1994), psychotherapeutic talk is suited to the study of strategic, interactional aspects of metaphor. These include the rhetorical development of metaphors in accordance with speakers’ discourse objectives (Wee, 2005a), the interplay of different source and target domains offered by interlocutors (Goatly, 1997; Kimmel, 2010), and the co-occurrence of metaphors with other linguistic features in the co-text (McMullen, 2008; Ochs, 1996; Yamaguchi, 2005).

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Steen (2008) made an important recent call for researchers to pay greater attention to how metaphors are produced, elaborated, and negotiated when they perform a deliberate communicative function explicitly recognised by the discourse participants at hand. Investigating the properties of metaphors used and managed under the diverse circumstances of psychotherapy, as sketched above, should constitute a timely response. In summary, psychotherapy as a discourse activity provides an ideal and coherent context for many theoretical aspects of metaphor to be empirically investigated. I will focus on the following aspects in this book, elaborating each in a separate chapter: 1. How embodied, cultural, and individual-specific knowledge are simultaneously drawn upon as ideational resources in the construction of metaphors (Section 2.3) 2. How metaphors are strategically developed, or extended in discourse, in accordance with prevailing discourse objectives (Section 2.4) 3. How therapeutic participants take up, extend, or deviate from metaphoric source/target concepts established in talk (Section 2.5) 4. How metaphors of therapy exhibit constancy and variation across different levels of a therapeutic discourse community (Section 2.5) 5. How metaphoric expressions co-occur in patterned ways with co-textual features, such as discourse markers (Section 2.6) While the list is by no means exhaustive, it encompasses several major themes which have been the focus of much theoretical and empirical work in metaphor research. I provide a review of this body of work in the following sections, and suggest how an analysis of psychotherapeutic discourse can interrogate these themes and contribute to existing knowledge. 2.3 The ideational resources of metaphors A fundamental question that must be addressed by any metaphor theory concerns what can be called the ontological basis of metaphors; i.e. the grounds upon which a source and a target concept are associated to produce a successful metaphor. This answer seems straightforward if we take the Aristotelian view that metaphors highlight interesting resemblances for rhetorical effect (Richards, 1936). In this view, when one utters Achilles is a lion, some resemblance, or similarity, is implied between a lion and Achilles (e.g. the attribute of braveness). The metaphoric expression is simply a fanciful substitute for Achilles is a brave man, where the



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

literal phrase brave man does just as well in restating the attribute which associates source and target. Over the twentieth century, more complex views have emerged which claim that metaphoric meanings rely upon an interaction between sources and targets which cannot be easily paraphrased (Beardsley, 1967; Black, 1962), or upon the context-specific circumstances of a metaphor’s utterance (Searle, 1979; Sperber & Wilson, 1995). While these accounts try to explain how source-target associations are constructed in fairly explicit, or prototypical metaphors (e.g. Man is a wolf, John is a pig), CMT broadens the scope of the question by observing the subtle yet pervasive metaphoricity of prosaic, everyday expressions such as I am in trouble and she is out of love. In both these examples, spatial prepositions (in, out) are used to describe non-spatial experiential states (trouble, love), suggesting a more general understanding of ‘states of being’ in terms of ‘locations’ (V. Evans, 2009; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Likewise, moving back to the kind of examples traditionally discussed, expressions such as Achilles is a lion, he is the king of the jungle and he let out a victory roar demonstrate a convergence where various qualities of men are understood in terms of qualities of lions. This leads to the postulation of underlying ‘conceptual metaphors’, characterised as mappings across knowledge domains in our conceptual systems (Lakoff, 1993), which govern the understanding of individual metaphoric expressions. A survey of common parlance for abstract domains like causation and time1 reveals many more examples of thematically generalisable metaphoric expressions which are remarkably similar even across typologically unrelated languages (e.g. Arabic, Basque, Mandarin Chinese), further suggesting that conceptual metaphors are trans-cultural and trans-­linguistic (Abdulmoneim, 2006; Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2008; Yu, 2009). Additionally, metaphoric expressions classifiable under the same conceptual metaphor are also inferentially linked. When one utters She fell into a disastrous relationship, but managed to climb back out, the logic of interiority and exteriority are ‘preserved’, and ‘mapped’ onto the corresponding target domain logic of having, and not having a lover. In summary, cognitivists make the forceful claim that metaphors are primarily resident in thought, and secondarily manifest in language. They are not only ubiquitous, but necessary for even the most banal of everyday reasoning.

1. It is conventional for metaphor researchers to represent conceptual metaphors in the form a is b (e.g. time is space), where a refers to the target domain and b the source domain. This usefully distinguishes conceptual metaphors from the linguistic metaphors instantiating them, which are presented in small letters (e.g. We are moving into a new semester).

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2.3.1 Embodied knowledge It would thus appear that resemblance or interaction among isolated source and target concepts is inadequate to account for the systematicity, necessity, and inferential productivity of conceptual metaphors. The cognitivist explanation turns to the notion of embodiment, or embodied cognition (M. Anderson, 2003; Clark, 1997; Wilson, 2002). Broadly defined, embodied cognition is the study of how “higher order cognition”, such as the understanding of abstract concepts without a direct experiential basis, “can be traced back to its bodily bases” (M. Anderson, 2003: 105). In the context of metaphor ontology, cognitivists theorise that the source domains of many conceptual metaphors are derived from recurrent patterns of sensorimotor experiences. These patterns, known as image schemas (Johnson, 1987, 1989; Mandler, 2004)2, co-occur with primitive subjective judgements in presumably universal scenarios of early human life (Grady, 1997; Grady & Johnson, 2002; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). For example, our recurrent physical experiences of being situated in and out of bounded containers (e.g. rooms, buildings), which gives rise to the formation of a container image schema (Johnson, 1987: 331), co-occur with subjective judgements of experiencing and not experiencing certain states of being. Likewise, we often travel from a starting point to an end point, the basis of the source-path-goal image schema, in order to fulfil some subjectively perceived objective. Later in cognitive development, subjective judgements are no longer necessarily conflated with their respective sensorimotor experiences. However, due to their previous co-occurrence, there remains a strong motivation for the inferential logic of the latter to be metaphorically projected onto the former. These projections are known as primary metaphors (see Lakoff & Johnson, 1999: 50–54 for a list). They persist through adult cognition, and can be combined to form complex conceptual metaphors. Conceptual metaphors in turn determine how abstract concepts, which are not themselves embodied, are understood and expressed via language.3

2. Johnson (1987: 126) provides a hypothesized inventory of image schemas, including container, balance, compulsion, contact, blockage, center/periphery etc. 3. Some scholars have also highlighted the pragmatic and communicative utility (Tyler & Evans, 2001) of using the vocabulary of concrete domains to express abstract concepts. As Taylor (2002: 491–492) summarises, “statements pertaining to concrete domains… can be easily verified by other observers. Inter-subjective agreement on the meanings of ‘concrete’ terms – spatial terms, in particular – is therefore relatively easy to establish… By talking about the abstract in terms of the concrete, we create the illusion of objectivity, and thereby facilitate communication about the abstract”.



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

The constitutive role of conceptual metaphors has been argued for in the construction of various domains of knowledge (e.g. Economics – Alejo, 2010; Kecskes, 2004; Koller, 2004; White, 2003; Philosophy – Slingerland, 2004; Politics – Chilton, 1996b; Kuusisto, 2002; Lakoff, 1996; Shogimen, 2008). However, since linguistic and textual evidence is typically used in these studies to demonstrate the existence of conceptual metaphors, which are in turn claimed to motivate the metaphoric language and text, the entire process is susceptible to charges of circularity (Haser, 2005; McGlone, 2001; Taylor, 2002). In response, researchers have found evidence for conceptual metaphors in non-linguistic modalities such as images (Forceville, 1998, 2006; Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009), rituals (Slingerland, 2003), gestures (Cienki & Müller, 2008; Müller & Cienki, 2009), as well as other aspects of thought and behaviour (Barsalou, Niedenthal, Barbey, & Ruppert, 2003; Meier & Robinson, 2004; Meier, Robinson, & Clore, 2004; Riskind & Gotay, 1982). In their most recent and ongoing works, Lakoff and others continue to argue for the embodied grounding of metaphors by theorising them as neuro-biological structures in the human brain (Dodge & Lakoff, 2005; Feldman, 2006; Lakoff, 2008). If metaphors are neuro-biologically grounded and constitute our understanding of abstract concepts, what about the role of culture in concept formation? The conventional association between, say, lives and journeys seems after all just as readily accounted for in terms of cultural perception and knowledge. Moreover, as Meier and colleagues (2004: 84) suggest, metaphors as conceived by cognitivists may be “convenient”, but “not absolutely necessary” to our conceptual understanding. One set of studies which probes the embodiment-culture relationship, and concludes by emphasising the foundational role of embodiment, examines crosscultural metaphors of emotions such as anger (Gentner, Imai, & Boroditsky, 2002; Kövecses, 1995; Lakoff & Kövecses, 1987; Matsuki, 1995; Yu, 1998 ). These studies argue that the diverse ways of conceptualising anger in different languages and cultures are ultimately constrained by “factors over and above (their) particular historical development”. Furthermore, “the constraining or stabilizing factor seems to be human physiology in anger, as well as the particular image we have of the physical structure of human beings across cultures” (Kövecses, 1995: 194). It has been demonstrated, for example, that English, Hungarian, Japanese and Chinese all construe anger as some sort of heated fluid in a container as per the universal container image schema, even though specific details about the type of fluid and container may vary. Ning Yu (1999) adopts a similar position by upholding the universal embodied grounding of the time is space metaphor, suggesting that differences between languages regarding whether the future is in front or behind (e.g. Mandarin Chinese vs. Māori) is a secondary matter of ‘directionality parameter’ switching. Núñez and Sweetser (2006) likewise accommodate cultural factors within an embodiment framework in their analysis of the Aymara language, which

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construes the future as behind, concluding that “fundamental abstract everyday concepts such as time, although ultimately grounded in the same universal human bodily experience of the world, can get shaped in specific ways to generate cultural variability” (Núñez and Sweetser, 2006: 442). Therefore, what appear to be culture/ language-specific understandings of abstract concepts are ultimately traceable to a common metaphoric basis grounded in bodily processes. Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 60–73) conclude that all conceptual metaphors are analysable as the synthesis of primary metaphors with an elaborative component of cultural knowledge (i.e. complex metaphor = primary metaphor + cultural knowledge).4 Kövecses (1999) further endeavoured to show that the component of cultural knowledge can itself be constituted by conceptual metaphors. 2.3.2 Cultural knowledge The embodiment account of metaphor ontology has been highly influential, and takes its place alongside much broader claims about the neurobiological grounding of language and concepts (Dodge & Lakoff, 2005; Feldman, 2006; Gibbs, 2006a; Glenberg, 1997; Pinker, 1997). Its main strength is its ability to explain the pervasiveness, inferential robustness, and seeming universality of many conceptual metaphors. However, while it explains how embodied concepts are “pushed” to structure the ontology of abstract target concepts, it is less successful in accounting for how situation-specific understandings of targets consciously “pull” and select appropriate source concepts (Howe, 2008). Critics of cognitivists also argue that cultural knowledge (Quinn, 1991; Vervaeke & Kennedy, 1996) and unique episodes of individual experience (Ritchie, 2009) are just as important in comprising our inventories of source concepts, and deserve more than their ancillary or ambiguously stated position in CMT. The claim that abstract concepts are reducible to trans-cultural, embodied metaphoric thought is rejected by anthropologists who propose the notion of cultural models (D’Andrade, 1989, 1990; Keesing, 1979), defined as “presupposed, taken-for-granted models of the world” (Holland & Quinn, 1987: 4). Like conceptual metaphors, cultural models are cognitive representations of salient concepts shared by members of a particular culture. They are however neither necessarily embodied nor metaphorical, and are acquired through processes of enculturation 4. This componential account of primary and complex metaphors, where the former is seen as building blocks constructing the latter, differs from earlier accounts where the relationship between embodied and culturally elaborated metaphors is construed hierarchically instead of componentially (Lakoff, 1993). However, both accounts are similar in their treatment of culture as ancillary in metaphor formation.



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

(Sinha & Jensen de López, 2000). In this view, metaphors do not constitute conceptual understanding, but the use of metaphors rather reflects pre-existing cultural understandings. Quinn (1981, 1987, 1991, 2005) demonstrates the cultural basis of metaphors by analysing how Americans use them to talk about marriage. Her interviewees consistently characterise marriage in thematic terms such as lastingness, compatibility, risk, effort etc., which suggest a non-metaphorical, culturally based understanding of marriage as a socio-cultural institution. When metaphors are used, they are more readily analysable as augmenting literal ways of talking about these themes, rather than as ontological building blocks that construct them. Quinn suggests that source concepts are chosen by speakers based on how well they exemplify the marriage cultural model. For instance, when commenting on the ideal lastingness of marriage, people freely combine the use of varied source concepts such as well-manufactured products, durable objects and journeys,5 which are not plausibly analysable as possessing a common image schematic structure. Instead, these sources are chosen because they are good exemplars of durable things, and hence appropriate for illustrating (rather than constituting) the concept of lastingness (cf. Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999). Culturally salient source concepts furthermore generate important connotations, including “emotional attitudes, desires, and behavioural dispositions” (Bartsch, 2002: 52), all of which can deliver inferences regarding the intended targets (cf. Forceville, Hekkert, & Tan, 2006). When marriage is described as a religious sacrament (Quinn, 1991: 66) or time as money (Howe, 2008: 21), speakers presumably wish to highlight the cultural understanding that sacraments (and hence marriages) possess divine significance, or that money (and hence time) is of utmost value. The general conclusion is that cultural knowledge provides a more immediate and flexible link between metaphoric sources and targets. Metaphors are contingently created and used for their “discursive utility and fruitfulness”, rather than because of a cognitive reflex stemming from acultural experiential correlations (Howe, 2008: 21). It also appears that many widely used conceptual metaphors are not even plausibly reducible to experiential correlations. One example is the pedagogical staple electricity is water (Gentner & Gentner, 1983), where any source-target experiential co-occurrence is more likely to lead to electrocution than to a metaphor. Another example comes from Wee (2006), who argued that the tendency in Singaporean news discourse to describe local entities in terms of American entities (e.g. We should try to be the Silicon Valley of the East) is much more intuitively 5. Examples of metaphors for lastingness provided by Quinn include it was stuck together pretty good (well-manufactured product), the everlasting Gibraltar nature of the thing (durable object) and it’s that feeling of confidence… that’s going to keeps us going (journey) (Quinn, 1991: 66).

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accountable in terms of a pervasive cultural model of modernity, rather than any sort of embodied correlation. Researchers have moreover found evidence of crosscultural differences in basic metaphoric associations which would have been prime contenders for universality in a strong cognitivist view, such as that between spatial and numerical representation. For instance, it has been shown that the spatial understanding of numbers (e.g. number lines) is entrenched only during elementary school years, and children who learn to read from right to left acquire a different spatial-numerical metaphor than those who read from left to right (Berch, Foley, Hill, & Ryan, 1999; Zebian, 2005). This suggests the significant role that culturally created spatial-numerical representations (e.g. overt instructions from teachers, overlaps with the direction of reading) play in constructing these associations. While the influence of contemporary cultural understandings on metaphor seems clear, archaic cultural beliefs have also been shown to leave their imprint on contemporary metaphoric expressions. Taking the example of anger metaphors, although cognitivists might be right that expressions like boiling with rage, exploding in anger etc. are motivated by embodied physiological reactions to anger, it is also likely that they are linguistic remnants of the ancient humoral theory of Western medicine, in which anger is literally believed to be caused by hot substances circulating in the body (Geeraerts & Grondelaers, 1995). The latter explanation seems all the more plausible given that comparable expressions were extremely scarce prior to the rise of the humoral theory (Geeraerts & Gevaert, 2008; Gevaert, 2007). Therefore, without properly investigating etymologies, cognitivists risk overestimating the importance of cognitive processes at the expense of historical and socio-cultural ones. A related problem with ahistorical and transcultural analyses of metaphor is that concepts such ‘anger’, ‘causation’, or even ‘the self ’, which are used as labels for universal metaphors and hence assumed to be conceptually represented in similar ways across the world, could themselves turn out to be highly culture-specific (Goddard, 1996,2008; Harkins & Wierzbicka, 2001; Mylne, 1995; Wierzbicka, 1992, 1999; Wolk, 2008). If the use of such labels is “ethnocentric” (Wierzbicka, 1992: 26), conceptual metaphors in the form a is b can only be doubly so. 2.3.3 Individual-specific knowledge With the spotlight divided between embodied and cultural accounts of metaphor ontology, the notion of individual conceptual fields (Ritchie, 2006, 2009) as an ideational resource for metaphors has garnered some recent attention. Individual conceptual fields refer to personalised “schemas” and “narratives” acquired through one’s life experience (cf. Feyaerts, 1999; Taylor, 2002), which affords personalised



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

ways of making sense of the world. Not unlike conceptual metaphors (Gibbs, 2006b), these individualised conceptual representations can invoke vivid simulations (Barsalou, 1999, 2007) which facilitate their recruitment as source materials, when one produces metaphors with a characteristically individual signature. Individual conceptual fields can furthermore be related to the notion of autobiographical memories (Brewer, 1986; Rubin, 1996), or organised recollections of specific events in one’s life. In his more recent works, Kövecses (2005, 2010b) has suggested that the ways in which individuals draw from idiosyncratic and personal experiences when constructing metaphors point towards a robust yet under-researched means of creating source-target associations. He provides examples of news anchorman Dan Rather’s metaphors in his coverage of the 2001 American presidential elections, such as “the presidential campaign is… still hotter than a Laredo parking lot”, which “seem to reflect Rather’s southern upbringing” (Kövecses, 2005: 107), and appear uniquely attributable to him. Though there might be a correlation between one’s level of creativity and inclination to draw from individual conceptual fields when using metaphors, Kövecses argues that the latter is clearly not limited to stereotypically creative individuals such as poets, but occur in everyday communicative situations as well. In summary, the felicitous relation of a source with a target concept has been theorised as motivated at three different levels – (i) embodied correlations, (ii) cultural understandings, and (iii) individual experience. Since all three levels appear to be necessary and principally distinct components of the makeup of individual speakers, researchers have been careful to state their potential complementarity, such that no level can be said to be entirely disregarded even among theorists of contrasting persuasions (e.g. Cameron & Deignan, 2006: 679; Gibbs & Cameron, 2008: 74; Kövecses, 2003a; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 57; Ritchie, 2006). One strand of research, broadly labelled the socio-cultural situatedness of embodied cognition, focuses particularly on the interaction between embodiment and culture in cognitive processes, of which metaphor is a part (Frank, Dirven, Ziemke, & Bernárdez, 2008). I now turn to this body of work, and suggest how a discourse analytic approach – with psychotherapeutic discourse in particular – can shed additional light on how speakers draw simultaneously upon embodied, cultural, and individual experiences when constructing metaphors. 2.3.4 Socio-cultural situatedness and metaphor Socio-cultural situatedness denotes “the way(s) in which individual minds and cognitive processes are shaped by their being together with other embodied minds, i.e. their interaction with social and cultural structures” (R. Frank, 2008: 1). The

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emphasis on “interaction”, considered in the context of metaphor ontology, underlines the potential complementarity between embodiment, culture, and individual experience. It has been suggested elsewhere that a “biologically informed approach to human cognition” does not automatically rule out “recognition of the constitutive role in it of culture” (Sinha, 2002: 273), and that “there is room within… general (biological) constraints for extensive cultural variation” (Johnson & Lakoff, 2002: 251) in cognitive models such as metaphors and image schemas (cf. Palmer, 1996; Shore, 1996). A fundamental point is that embodied experience, no matter how prosaic and presumably universal, still ultimately occurs under some unique set of sociocultural conditions (Heidegger, 1962; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Vygotsky, 1978). The type of individual-centric embodiment usually implied might thus be more realistically theorised as situated, extended or collective embodiment (Bernárdez, 2008; Maalej, 2004, 2008; Tomasello, 1999; Zlatev, 2007), where bodily experiences such as being in and out of containers and moving along a path are “constructed out of culturally governed interactions” (Gibbs, 1999b: 154) rather than experienced as individual sensorimotor beings (Alverson, 1991; Hutchins, 1996; Kimmel, 2005). Anthropologists have demonstrated how local knowledge and practices influence basic bodily experiences like sweating and menstruation (Bharati, 1985; Csordas, 1994; Geurts, 2003; Greeno, 1989; Hunt, 1977; Kirmayer, 1992), and how such situated embodiment plays a role in concept formation (see Kimmel, 2008 for a summary). The intimate ties between embodiment and socio-cultural phenomena thus render any exclusively embodied or cultural account of metaphor and conceptual understanding misleading and overly simplistic (Emanatian, 1999: 215). Ning Yu (2003, 2008b) further posits a “circular triangle relationship” between metaphor, body, and culture, in that “conceptual metaphors are usually grounded in bodily experiences; cultural models, however, filter bodily experiences for specific target domains of conceptual metaphors; and cultural models themselves are very often structured by conceptual metaphors” (Yu, 2008b: 387). Similar conclusions about the interplay between the embodied, cultural, and individual dimensions of metaphor have been reached in analyses of actual metaphoric discourse (Chilton, 1996b; Frank et al., 2008; Gibbs & Cameron, 2008; Kövecses, 2010b). One strand of research examines the instantiations of enduring and pervasive framing devices in socio-political discourses (i.e. discourse metaphors; Zinken et al., 2008), such as belonging is having roots and nationstates are houses (cf. Chilton, 1996b; Chilton & Ilyin, 1993). The reason certain metaphors outlast others in discourse history can be partly explained by how their embodied and cultural underpinnings complement each other in the fulfilment of particular discourse objectives. Based on a study of “heart of Europe” metaphors in European political discourse, Musolff (2004: 142; 2008: 319) suggests two criteria



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

for the success of any discourse metaphor – meaning consistency, afforded by its relatively invariant image schematic grounding, and conceptual flexibility, made possible by its ability to incorporate significant cultural images. The study of ‘macro’ discourse metaphors shows how complementary ideational resources, typically analysed at the separate levels of embodiment, culture, and individual experience, contribute to the sustenance of socio-political ideologies. Analysing metaphors in contexts such as spontaneous conversation (Cameron et al., 2009; Gibbs & Cameron, 2008) would usefully reveal whether similar processes are attested to at the ‘micro’ level of text and talk. As a prime example of goal directed interaction in which participants are constantly conceptualising and communicating abstract problems and solutions (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988), psychotherapeutic talk and its metaphors are well suited to this purpose. While the cultural dimension of metaphor has received considerable attention in the therapeutic literature, mostly for its implications for dealing with patients from different cultural backgrounds (Abernethy, 2002; Ahammed, 2010; Alverson et al., 2007; Dwairy, 1999, 2009), less often discussed is the dimension of individual experience (Shinebourne & Smith, 2010; Zindel, 2001). This has occurred despite the fact that subjective acts of narration such as the telling of personal stories (Neimeyer, 1995) and personalised accounts of mental affliction (Roe & Lachman, 2005) are often accorded therapeutic significance. In Chapter 3, I will present a case study of therapist-patient interaction over four near-consecutive therapeutic sessions, and document the creative interplay of the embodied, cultural, and individual dimensions of metaphors deployed in the fulfilment of prescriptive aims. 2.4 The rhetorical development of metaphor A question closely related to the contents of sources and targets is how source-­ target associations are discursively presented when a metaphor is extended to develop a particular idea. In psychotherapy, the strategic use of metaphor is not limited to the mere introduction of a suitable source concept for a target concept (Strong, 1989). Instead, in accordance with the discourse objective(s) at hand, therapists and patients often elaborate how details in the source relate to details in the target, thus enacting what we might call the rhetorical construction and development of metaphors. Wee (2005a) provides a framework, inspired by psycholinguistic models of metaphor processing, to analyse the rhetorical construction of source-target relations in metaphor production. Among the many processing models which have been proposed in the psycholinguistics literature, the following have been most influential:

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i. ii. iii. iv.

correspondence model (Gentner, 1983; Lakoff, 1993) class inclusion model (Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999) career-of-metaphor model (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005) conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002)

The specific characteristics of each model will be outlined from Sections 2.4.1 to 2.4.4 below. The gist of Wee’s framework is that the main points of contrast between the models also turn out to be useful descriptors of how metaphors can be differently elaborated to suit different discourse purposes. Even though the models fall under the domain of behavioural analysis (Steen, 2007) in outlining psychological processes which appear to have no connection with the domain of structural and functional analysis, we can derive from their contrasting accounts of source-target relations some useful corresponding strategies of constructing source-target relations in metaphoric discourse. Consider for instance the correspondence model, which claims that metaphor comprehension involves mapping entities and relations from a source knowledge structure to a corresponding target knowledge structure. The class inclusion model, in contrast, claims instead that metaphor comprehension involves categorising both source and target under a newly created, overarching concept. Analogously, when using and elaborating a metaphor in discourse, certain situations call for producers to explicate source-target correspondences in a relatively exhaustive way, while in other situations it is more strategic to present both source and target as belonging to an overarching category. The framework thus views processing models analogously as discursive strategies, and creatively demonstrates how psycholinguistic and discourse analytic constructs in metaphor theory might relate to each other. Furthermore, notwithstanding the fundamental difference between processing and production, it inspires some speculation on possible deeper connections between the two (Boroditsky, 2000: 26; Gibbs, 1999b: 151; Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990: 15). John Anderson (1990, 2007) has argued that human cognitive mechanisms actively adapt to the environmental conditions under which they are deployed. In the case of metaphor, the cognitive mechanism is the metaphor processing model, while the environmental conditions refer to the discursive and textual qualities of the metaphor in question. Presumably, then, when one encounters a metaphor in discourse which rigorously highlights source-target correspondences, one would also be predisposed to process the metaphor in the way predicted by the correspondence model. It could therefore be that the various processing models are all valid in the sense of being contextually triggered ‘variants’ at the discourse level of metaphor understanding, rather than mutually incompatible theoretical contenders (cf. Martin, 2006). Pursuing this hypothesis, however, is beyond the scope of this book.



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

Labelling the discourse strategies as metaphor types, Wee applied his framework to the analysis of popular science texts and management advice texts. He suggests that the correspondence metaphor type is more suitable for the task of ‘conceptual explication’ commonly undertaken in popular science texts, while the class inclusion metaphor type is strategic for emphasising management maxims couched as metaphoric categories (see Sections 4.3 and 4.4 for a more detailed explanation and further examples). Chapter 4 of this book interrogates and extends Wee’s framework in several ways. Firstly, while uncovering a potential connection between psycholinguistics and discourse analysis is a healthy demonstration of methodological pluralism in metaphor research, there might be a need for labels other than ‘correspondence’ and ‘class inclusion’ for metaphor types, in order to avoid the impression that processing models are simplistically imposed upon, or conflated with the analysis of metaphoric discourse. Secondly, while we might expect discourse objectives such as conceptual explication to be a recurrent feature of clearly delineated genres like popular science texts, conversational contexts such as psychotherapy are more likely characterised by dynamic, shifting discourse objectives negotiated between interlocutors (Cameron, 2008). The concomitant shifts in the use of metaphor types which are likely to result have also yet to be explored. I now outline the four aforementioned processing models, and summarise the main arguments for and against them (cf. Steen, 2007: Chapter 3). This provides a background understanding of their similarities and differences in advance of Chapter 4, where I will exemplify in greater detail how they can be suitably recast as strategies of metaphor development, and analyse respective examples of psychotherapeutic talk. 2.4.1 Correspondence: Systematic mappings between domains The correspondence model defines metaphor as a systematic process of ‘mappings’ which establish in the target domain correspondent entities, attributes, and relations from the source domain. The two domains are furthermore isomorphic such that in principle, but not always in reality, a correspondent target element can be successfully construed for every conceivable source element. These features help cognitivists explain how sources systematically structure targets, and how new inferences could be rationally drawn about a target based on an encyclopaedic (Langacker, 1987: 155) understanding of the source. However, the model does not itself entail the strongest cognitivist claims (e.g. metaphors are grounded in bodily experience, source-target mappings are entrenched in semantic memory, target concepts are wholly dependent upon the source etc.). For example, it is still consistent with correspondence models to suggest that source domains provide

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useful relational structures for the target, without claiming that they are actually necessary for target conceptualisation (e.g. Boroditsky, 2000; Gentner, 1983; Meier et al., 2004), or are entrenched in semantic memory (e.g. Ortony, 1979). Results of various experiments have lent support to the psychological reality of the correspondence model. Nayak and Gibbs (1990) presented subjects with different short narratives which conceptualised anger as either a heated fluid or as animal behaviour. When asked to rate which of two synonymous idioms (i.e. she blew her top vs. she bit his head off) were more appropriate to conclude the narratives, subjects showed a significant preference for the idiom which ostensibly shares the same underlying conceptual metaphor as the preceding narrative (i.e. blew her top for the heated fluid narrative, and bit his head off for the animal behaviour narrative). Nayak and Gibbs concluded that the difference in appropriateness ratings reflected the relative naturalness of one candidate idiom over the other, since each idiom depicts a scenario which already fits into the correspondent structure activated by the respective conceptual metaphor. Boroditsky and associates (Boroditsky, 2000, 2001; Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002) have likewise found support for the correspondence model by showing how knowledge of the spatial domain systematically facilitates (but does not constitute) reasoning in the temporal domain. The correspondence model is therefore compatible with both the strong cognitivist view, where the source constitutes the target, as well as the view that the source is merely one possible way of structuring the target. Critics of the model offer a supposedly more parsimonious alternative – that source and target domains are isomorphic not because the latter inherits the structure of the former, but because they are commonly organised by a more abstract schema (Jackendoff, 1983), or just happen to exhibit structural similarity (Murphy, 1996). To counter these objections, correspondence theorists point to the “overwhelming” (Boroditsky, 2000: 25) source-to-target directionality typically observed in metaphors – the fact that source and targets are not normally reversible (e.g. ideas are food but not *food are ideas) suggests that there is a cognitive tendency, not readily explainable by structural similarity, for inferences to flow uni-directionally. 2.4.2 Class inclusion: Extraction of superordinate categories Class inclusion theorists reject the view that metaphor involves transfer between two delineated conceptual structures. Instead, canonical metaphoric statements in the form x is y (e.g. He is a time bomb) are seen as categorical, or class inclusive assertions (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990), processed in a similar way as literal x is y statements (e.g. He is a professor). In the literal case, the subject is classified



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

under the lexicalised category of professors. In the metaphoric case, the subject (target) is classified under a spontaneously created, non-lexicalised, superordinate category of ‘dangerous, unpredictable things’, of which the subject complement (source) ‘time bomb’ is a prototypical exemplar. Since the ad hoc category lacks a conventional label, it is labelled by the prototypical source. There is thus no need for pre-existing correspondences which putatively hold between people and time bombs. Instead, the superordinate category subsumes both source and target, and suggests attributes which are then assigned to the target. This also applies to metaphorical expressions involving other lexical classes, such as verbs. In she hopped on her bike and flew home (Glucksberg and Keysar, 1990: 16), flying is understood as a prototypical exemplar of the superordinate category of ‘swift and direct actions’, which characterises both flying and bike-riding. With repeated use, senses implied by superordinate categories might become conventionally associated with their instantiating sources, resulting in polysemy. For example, ‘butcher’ has a secondary dictionary meaning, “to bungle or botch”, which is derived from its repeated use as a metaphor for incompetence (McGlone, 2007: 117). The class inclusion model is argued to be superior to the correspondence model on the grounds of economy. It is important to note that class inclusion theorists tend to associate the correspondence model with the strong cognitivist claim that concepts are constituted by pre-existing metaphorical mappings entrenched in semantic memory. Glucksberg and McGlone (1999: 1525) regard the cognitivist position as “maximalist” and uneconomical, because of the need to posit an almost infinite amount of mappings to account for our metaphoric competence. Moreover, fixed mappings presuppose the existence of clearly demarcated conceptual domains, which remain a problematic theoretical construct (Evans & Green, 2006: 230). Taylor (2002) and Feyaerts (1999) further point out that domains are inherently porous, and are likely to vary across individuals (Section 2.3.3). In contrast, the class inclusive notion of ad hoc categories requires no fixed inventory of mappings across domains, because in novel metaphors the construction of an appropriate superordinate category is driven by context, while in conventional metaphors understanding proceeds by lexical disambiguation. Source-target relations in metaphors are largely contingent (Haser, 2005), rather than being “easily defined or bounded by any obvious natural (cause/effect) criteria” (Durham & Fernandez, 1991: 193)6. Class inclusion theorists also provide experimental evidence to support their claims, while offering alternative interpretations for the evidence given 6. Durham and Fernandez made this remark in a discussion of metonymy. It remains instructive even though they neither referred to, nor explicitly identified with the standard cognitive linguistic understanding of the notion of domains.

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by correspondence theorists. A series of studies (Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999; McGlone, 1996) tested whether peoples’ reported understanding of metaphors suggest the activation of conceptual metaphors such as ideas are food and love is a journey, or whether it resulted from the extraction of superordinate attributes from the source terms. It was found that, when asked to explain expressions such as Dr. Moreland’s lecture was a three-course meal for the mind and our love is a voyage to the bottom of the sea, respondents seldom made references to food or journeys. Instead of making use of cross-domain correspondences, people focused on superordinate attributes such as ‘high quality/quantity’ for the former case, and ‘mysterious and dangerous’ for the latter case. Furthermore, as expected, different respondents inferred different superordinate categories (Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999: 1548), which contradicts the claim that certain conceptual mappings are invariably activated when ‘keywords’ are encountered. Finally, when asked to provide other metaphors similar in meaning to the given examples, respondents were consistent with the superordinate categories they inferred, rather than with the source domains presumed to underlie the fixed conceptual metaphors (e.g. Dr Moreland’s lecture was a truck-load of information rather than a steak for the mind). In terms of offering alternative explanations for experimental results that support the correspondence model, Kreuz and Graesser (1991) suggest that the preferential judgements of Nayak and Gibb’s (1990) respondents are attributable to lexical priming effects (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1986; Potts, Keenan, & Golding, 1988) rather than activated cross-domain mappings. People prefer bit his head off rather than blew her top not because they classified it under the activated conceptual metaphor anger is animal behaviour, but simply because the preceding narrative contained more expressions in the semantic field of animal behaviour. In summary, the major differences between correspondence and class inclusion are the extent to which knowledge from one domain is deemed to influence the comprehension of another, as well as the degree of systematicity underlying this process. The correspondence model states that sources structure our understanding of targets via systematic cross-domain correspondences, although there is some internal disagreement over whether certain targets are necessarily understood via certain sources. In contrast, the class inclusion model states that source-target relations are constructed ad hoc, and that understanding proceeds by way of a singular superordinate concept that subsumes both source and target. Furthermore, with repeated usage, the ad hoc category might become conventionally associated with its instantiating source – a claim which brings us to the career-of-metaphor model.



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

2.4.3 Career-of-metaphor: Integrating correspondence and class inclusion The career-of-metaphor model was proposed by Gentner and Bowdle (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005; Gentner & Bowdle, 2001), who believe that differences between the correspondence and class inclusion models are “more apparent than real, and that a unified theoretical framework can be offered that reconciles these opposing views” (2001: 223). Gentner and Bowdle base their aptly named model on the observation that the metaphoric senses of polysemous expressions evolve in their “careers” to gradually become more conventional, or salient (Giora, 1997), to speakers – a position consistent with recent research on the neural mechanisms of metaphor processing (Cardillo, Watson, Schmidt, Kranjec, & Chatterjee, 2012). Accordingly, the degree of conventionality is the crucial factor determining whether a metaphor is processed by correspondence or class-inclusion. Newly coined (novel) metaphors are always interpreted via comparison (as per correspondence), while widespread (conventional) metaphors can be interpreted either via comparison, or categorisation (as per class inclusion). When a novel metaphor is first encountered, there is a need to search for semantic relations common to both source and target in order to make sense of it. Consider the metaphor Strauss-Kahn is a rutting chimpanzee, recently coined to describe certain indiscrete activities of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn7 (cf. Gentner and Bowdle’s [2001: 226–227] men are wolves example). The common relation recurrent sexual excitement is identified, and source domain arguments (i.e. sexually active with female animals) are structurally aligned with their target counterparts (sexually active with female persons). Attributes unique to the source but related to the aligned structure (e.g. chimpanzees freely and indiscriminately initiate sexual relations) can then be further transferred to the target. Recall that class inclusion theorists would claim instead that a suitable ad hoc category is derived from chimpanzees, and spontaneously attributed to Strauss-Kahn. However, while this successfully accounts for the flexibility of metaphor interpretations, the process is uneconomical because many sources “can suggest a potentially unlimited number of ad hoc categories”, all of which must in principle be entertained “while the target concept is scanned for dimensions of applicability” (Bowdle and Gentner, 2005: 195). The proposed structure mapping mechanism (Gentner, 1983) is more economical as it theorises an interaction between source and target right at the beginning, which greatly constrains the set of possible interpretations.8 7. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/16/dominique-strauss-khan-tristane-banon. 8. Recall that economy is supposed to be an advantage of the class inclusion model over the correspondence model. However, also recall that Glucksberg and McGlone’s charge of un-economy is directed at a specific claim made by one version of the correspondence model – i.e., the strong

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The notion of structure mapping is consistent with the correspondence model, and exemplifies both isomorphism and knowledge transfer, or “parallel connectivity” (Falkenhainer, Forbus, & Gentner, 1989). However, as a metaphor like men are wolves recurs and gradually becomes conventional, “the common relational structure that forms the basis of the metaphor interpretation will increase in salience relative to domain-specific differences between the two representations” (Gentner & Bowdle, 2001: 228). Furthermore, if a source term invokes the same common relational structure when applied to different targets (men are wolves, sexual offenders are wolves, and so on), that structure might then stabilise as a secondary sense of the base term, and result in the polysemy-like phenomenon discussed by class inclusion theorists (see Section 2.4.2). Interpretation of the conventional metaphor could then either still proceed by comparing the target and the literal sense of the source, or by categorising the target as a member of the category suggested by the secondary sense of the source. The latter process of categorisation is similar to that described by the class inclusion model, only that the abstract category no longer depends on an ad hoc interpretative process. Gentner and Bowdle also point out the formal metaphor/simile distinction as affecting the preferential use of comparison or categorisation in novel versus conventional figurative language.9 Previous studies (Gibb & Wales, 1990; Gregory & Mergler, 1990) have shown that figurative expressions couched as similes (x is like y) are likely to invite explicit comparisons, while those couched as metaphors (x is y) tend to invite categorisations. The career-of-metaphor model should therefore predict that novel figuratives are easier to interpret as similes than as metaphors, and hence people should prefer similes to metaphors for novel figuratives. This preference and ease of interpretation would however be reversed when figuratives become conventional. Additionally, if both novel similes and metaphors are indeed processed by comparison, people should have no reason to judge their degree of metaphoricity to be different, whereas if conventional metaphors can be understood by directly accessing the abstract metaphoric category, then people should judge conventional similes to be more metaphoric than conventional metaphors. Results from a series of experiments (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005; Gentner & Bowdle, 2001; Gentner & Wolff, 1997) support these predictions. cognitivist claim that source-to-target mappings are stored in semantic memory. Since the present version of the correspondence model (i.e. Gentner’s structure-mapping theory) makes no such claim, it is justified in making its own criticism about how the class inclusion model can also be uneconomical. 9. Such sensitivity to the formal aspects of figurative language is not generally a feature of conceptual metaphor theory, the key representative of correspondence models. As for the class inclusion model, Glucksberg and Keysar (1990) have argued that similes are like implicit metaphors because they are also processed by categorisation.



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

In summary, the career of metaphor model attempts to reconcile what appear to be incompatible approaches by highlighting the evolutionary trajectory of metaphoric conceptualisations. Structure mapping is believed to underlie the initial comprehension of novel metaphorical expressions, while the gradual abstraction of a superordinate category occurs en route to a metaphor’s conventionalisation. The surface linguistic forms of figurative expressions also play a role in determining the appropriate comprehension strategy. 2.4.4 Conceptual blending: On metaphoric creativity Conceptual blending theory (‘blending theory’ hereafter) aims to model general cognitive processes, of which metaphor is but a part (Fauconnier & Turner, 1994, 1998, 2002; Grady et al., 1999). Due to their common origin in cognitive science (Fauconnier & Turner, 1998: 135), blending theory shares a broadly similar architecture with CMT, modelling metaphor comprehension as involving mappings (or projections) within and across conceptual structures. Key differences arise however over the nature of these conceptual structures, the principles governing projections, and the outcome of the comprehension process. The main criticism blending theory raises against other models is their failure to account for the apparent novelty and creativity in many cases of metaphoric language and thought. Blending theory characterises a variety of linguistic and conceptual phenomena as resulting from the activation and co-ordination of what are called mental spaces. These are “small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002: 40); i.e. temporary knowledge representations which may nonetheless be connected to more stable structures such as conceptual domains (Grady, 2005). Conceptual blending involves the synergistic fusion of different spaces to yield a conceptual integration network. An integration network minimally requires four spaces: at least two input spaces, which hold information about the concepts at hand, a generic space, which captures abstract commonalities between the input spaces and sanctions partial mappings between them, and a blended space, into which elements from input spaces are projected, and from which emergent understanding arises. A popular example to illustrate conceptual blending is the Riddle of the Buddhist monk: A Buddhist monk begins at dawn one day walking up a mountain, reaches the top at sunset, meditates at the top for several days until one dawn when he begins to walk back to the foot of the mountain, which he reaches at sunset. Making no assumptions about his starting or stopping or about his pace during the trips, prove that there is a place on the path which he occupies at the same hour of the day on the two separate journeys.

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It is claimed that the widely reported solution of imagining the monk as two separate entities meeting each other along opposite paths is an outcome of blending. Each of the input spaces depicts an entity moving along a path in either direction, identity mappings are established between the entities, and the solution emerges from the blended space in which the input spaces are superimposed upon each other (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002: 39–44). Beyond solving fanciful puzzles, blending theorists claim that blending underlies much of the way we think about complex scientific ideas, grammatical structures in language, and many other mental operations in everyday life. Metaphors can likewise be seen as products of conceptual blending and, crucially, emergent understanding – the key feature distinguishing blending theory from other theories. Consider the expression this surgeon is a butcher. A correspondence model analysis would describe mappings from the butchery to the surgery domain; i.e. the butcher is mapped to the surgeon, the cleaver the scalpel, and so on. According to blending theorists, however, this fails to explain why we understand the metaphor to imply the surgeon’s incompetence, even though incompetence is not an inherent notion in the butchery domain, and therefore cannot be mapped. Blending theory suggests that, beyond the cross-domain (or cross-space) identity mappings described above, the ‘means of butchery’ from one input space and the ‘goal of surgery’ from the other are projected into the blended space, yielding the composite and emergent inference that a surgeon who operates with the means of butchery is incompetent (Grady et al., 1999). Emergent understanding is made possible by the synthesis of partial contributions from both input spaces. As another example, in John is digging his own grave, knowledge of the source domain of grave-digging cannot by itself deliver the key inference that John is creating trouble for himself. What is required is the causal structure of a second input space in which someone unwittingly contributes to his own downfall (Coulson, 2001). According to blending theory, other models fail to predict such cases where metaphor understanding cannot rely on unidirectional transfer from the source. It provides an answer with the notion of emergent understanding in the blended space, which can yet be further developed via a process known as “running the blend” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002). Armed with the notions of cross-space projections, blended spaces, and emergent understandings, blending theory powerfully accounts for highly novel instances of metaphor, or creative extensions of conventional ones (Kövecses, 2005: 259–282). However, a major criticism directed at blending theory is the dearth of empirical evidence for its powerful constructs. Mendoza and Cervel (2005) have for example argued that supposed cases of emergent understanding can be explained by less ostentatious processes of “correlation and contrast” among input spaces. It is in fact unclear how one should formulate experimental



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

conditions under which blending theory can be verified or falsified. Some researchers consequently view it as having a descriptive, “anything goes” quality rather than the predictive rigour expected of a proper scientific model for cognition (Gibbs, 2000, 2001). Moreover, most of its constructs (e.g. spaces, blends, networks) are themselves metaphorically couched, with entailments that are potentially misleading (Ritchie, 2004). Blending theorists respond to the criticism of empirical inadequacy by attempting to specify tighter constraints on blending operations (e.g. Fauconnier and Turner’s ‘optimality principles’ [1998, 2002]), and collecting experimental evidence for blending (Coulson & Matlock, 2001; Coulson & Van Petten, 2002). The general sentiment remains, however, that empirical demonstration of blending theory is still in its infancy (Steen, 2007: 52). 2.5 The consistency, variability, and variation of metaphor in discourse The strategic development of individual metaphors, as discussed in the previous section, underlines how source-target associations can be exploited to fulfil discourse objectives. While this profiles the enduring aspect of metaphors, or what can be called metaphoric consistency within some unit of discourse, researchers have also been interested in how metaphors may exhibit the flip side of variability and variation. Metaphor variation is often discussed as a counterpoint to the existence of highly conventional patterns of metaphoric language, which are ostensibly motivated by equally conventional conceptual metaphors. Kövecses (2005: 117–129) shows that variation can occur in any of the major components of a metaphor; i.e. the source domain, the target domain, mappings between source and target domains, entailments generated by the source domain, and so on. As per traditional sociolinguistic inquiry, metaphor variation is analysable at distinct levels of language and discourse. At the ‘macro’ level of language, conceptual metaphors posited to be universal, or near universal (e.g. life is a journey), have been observed to exhibit degrees of variation across different languages, cultures, or intra-cultural discourse communities (see Section 2.3.1). Yu’s extensive studies of conceptual metaphors in Mandarin Chinese (1995, 1998, 2008a, 2008b, 2009) illustrate this. For example, while both English and Mandarin Chinese have conventional expressions reflecting the conceptual metaphor happy is up, the related metaphor being happy is being off the ground is only found in English (Kövecses, 1991), since “being sustainedly off the ground is undesirable (for Chinese). It is not mapped positively onto happiness but negatively onto complacency and pride” (Yu, 2009: 18). At the ‘micro’ level of situated text and talk, speakers are known to tailor conventional metaphors in ways that reflect individual cognitive styles, and

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to meet the demands of the prevailing discourse (Argaman, 2008; Kövecses, 2005; Semino, 2008). Semino highlights the rhetorical function of metaphor variation by relating the use of metaphor by two individuals to describe the effects of a high level political meeting. Although both individuals conventionally described political progress as a journey, their varying descriptions of it as “climbing a mountain” and “getting things done step by step” (Semino, 2008: 2–3) served the purpose of conveying different evaluations of the same situation. Besides metaphor variation, which describes how languages, cultures, and individual speakers exercise a measure of innovation regarding conceptual metaphors, there is also the notion of metaphor variability. This refers to how speakers depart from metaphors established at earlier points in an episode of discourse (whether these are conventional or not), and progressively introduce new or variant sources and targets (Cameron, 2007b). Metaphor variability is similar to the notorious idea of “mixed metaphors”, or semantically incompatible figures of speech in close textual proximity, which have long been considered undesirable in the study of rhetoric. Quintilian (1891) described them as “a most shameful inconsistency”, while Gibbons (1969 [1767]) saw them as adding “something repugnant and dissimilar” to a previously introduced metaphoric image. For example, the familiar description of God as “the rock of salvation, on which we are to cast anchor” betrays an incongruity between the images of rocks and anchors, as vessels should certainly not anchor on rocks. One could argue along the lines of received sociolinguistic wisdom that variation and variability are inherent and unsurprising, whether aesthetically pleasing or not. However, they become matters of theoretical interest when considered against influential cognitivist assumptions which emphasise aspects of consistency instead. As discussed in Section 2.4.1, cognitivists describe metaphors as entrenched mappings activated during comprehension and production (Allbritton, McKoon, & Gerrig, 1995; Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). If the mappings are indeed entrenched, they should bear a cognitive effect beyond a single token of metaphor comprehension/ production, in that they should prime the subsequent comprehension/production of consistent metaphoric expressions, and inhibit inconsistent ones. This so–called metaphoric coherence principle (Shen & Balaban, 1999) predicts significant cognitive pressures for neighbouring metaphoric expressions to be affiliated with a common underlying conceptual (or root) metaphor. Furthermore, within the immediate unit of discourse, the thematic coherence of metaphors should contribute significantly to discourse coherence (Sanders & Spooren, 1999; Sanders, Spooren, & Noordman, 1992), since interlocutors presumably share and rely on the same conceptual mappings to construct mental representations of the discourse (Corts, 2006; Corts & Meyers, 2002; D. Ponterotto, 2003: 297).



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

Cognitivist theories present a static view of metaphor use as a reflex-like process of accessing relatively invariant sets of metaphoric mappings. However, as we have seen, incentives for variation and variability exist in many actual situations of metaphor use. Theorists sceptical of the power of fixed conceptual mappings to organise and constitute conceptualisation would in fact contend that there is no inherent reason in the first place to expect strong metaphoric consistency in discourse. Quinn (1991, 2005) has argued that non-metaphorical cultural models play a greater role than conceptual metaphors in shaping Americans’ conceptualisations of marriage, and demonstrated that the absence of “stable assemblage(s)” (Quinn, 1991: 70) of metaphors was unproblematic for coherent discussions of marriage related topics among her interviewees. Shen and Balaban (1999) likewise reported low levels of metaphoric consistency in Israeli political news reports, especially in the use of conventional metaphoric expressions. They suggest that “the use of conventional expressions in real discourse is autonomous… they do not rely on the functional activation of the entire root metaphor and, in that sense, their meanings are divorced from the underlying conceptual metaphors posited by the CM (conceptual metaphor) theory” (Shen & Balaban, 1999: 152)10. Goatly (1997) and Kimmel (2010)11 highlight the strategic use of variability in poetry and journalism by showing how metaphoric components are systematically manipulated for different rhetorical effects. For example, a single source concept can be continuously applied to different targets to create a “sense of equivalence” among the latter, while the converse use of different source concepts for a single target ensures a “diversification of grounds”. While we have a fair understanding of metaphoric consistency, variability, and variation as general discursive phenomena, few analysts have taken specific discourse contexts as points of departure, and examined how these phenomena 10. Notice that, even though novel metaphoric expressions in Shen and Balaban’s study do tend to be mutually coherent to a greater extent (cf. Gentner & Boronat, 1992), the lack of coherence for conventional expressions is already sufficient to challenge the cognitivist view, which does not discriminate between conventional and novel expressions as instantiations of underlying conceptual metaphors. 11. Kimmel is concerned with preserving cognitivist insights, such as the metaphoric coherence principle, in the face of the demonstrable variability of metaphors in discourse. He suggests that variability does not rule out the organising power of conceptual metaphors. Rather, discourse units such as newspaper reports are typically comprised of “interweav(ing) meaning planes such as the mental spaces of agent belief, subagent (or recipient) belief, speaker’s evaluation, factual background knowledge, and others” (2010: 113). It would be unrealistic to expect one or a few root metaphors to circumscribe these different planes and constitute the entire argumentative structure of the discourse, although each root metaphor could very well possess some shaping power within each plane.

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are associable with particular circumstances within these contexts. Applying this analytic perspective to psychotherapeutic talk would usefully highlight more precise therapeutic motivations for the use of metaphors (Cirillo & Crider, 1995), and complement the prevailing emphasis on the static (i.e. what metaphors to use) rather than dynamic (i.e. how metaphors are negotiated) aspects of metaphor use. Chapters 5 and 6 of this book examine the consistency, variability, and variation of metaphors in psychotherapeutic discourse. In Chapter 5, a study of metaphoric variability, I document particular circumstances in therapy which motivate participants to take up, extend, or otherwise vary from source and/or target concepts previously introduced in the unfolding talk. Highlighting the flexible use of metaphor in this way provides balance to the existing emphasis on the benefits of consistently elaborating either therapist or patient-introduced metaphors (Kopp & Craw, 1998). Chapter 6 involves a perspective shift from previous chapters, in that I move from examining metaphors used in therapy, to a case study of metaphors of therapy. These refer to relatively stable sets of mappings which serve as conceptual framing devices (Zinken et al., 2008) for important theoretical constructs in psychotherapy, such as theories of psychopathology, and the nature of the ideal therapist-patient relationship. I show how the consistent conceptualisation of therapy as a journey across various levels of the psychotherapeutic discourse community (i.e. theorists, therapist trainers, and actual therapists and patients) renders it an ideal framing device, which is nonetheless subject to varying instantiations to suit specific discursive needs at each level. 2.6 The co-text of metaphoric expressions in discourse From the pre-modal perspective of cognitive metaphor theory, language itself constitutes a crucial but under-examined context for metaphor use. Researchers who recognise this have studied the linguistic characteristics of metaphoric expressions, as well as properties of the co-textual environment in which metaphors occur (Cameron & Deignan, 2003; Deignan, 1999, 2005, 2006; Drew & Holt, 1998; Goatly, 1997; Moon, 1998). One central question is how the phonology, morpho-syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of a language constrain or shape the linguistic instantiations of conceptual metaphors. This is partly motivated by the cognitivist assertion of a general “systematicity of linguistic expressions” (Lakoff, 1993) with respect to underlying conceptual mappings, which implies a close relationship between conceptual metaphors and the formal levels of language. For instance, Kittay (1987) noticed that semantic relations between the literal senses of hot, warm, cool, and cold are systematically preserved when these words are used metaphorically. Low (1988) however showed that if a polysemous word has



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

a metaphoric sense in a particular lexical category (e.g. snake as a verb in the river snaked its way through the jungle), this metaphoricity does not necessarily apply to another lexical category (nominal snake is not normally used to describe a river). Advancements in corpus linguistics (Sinclair, 2004) have since facilitated the study of larger data sets across different discourse genres which in turn reveal that “there is a degree of apparent arbitrariness in (the) linguistic realisations (of conceptual metaphors)” (Deignan, 1999: 185). It is now generally accepted that formal differences, not predictable from their ostensible membership to conceptual metaphors, exist “between literal and non-literal uses or between different non-literal uses of a lexical item” (Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2006: 8). One under-examined aspect of the language of metaphors lies not in the linguistic properties of metaphoric expressions themselves, but in the surrounding co-textual ecology which figure in the interpretation of metaphoricity. Consider, for instance, the role of the italicised elements in the following expressions: 1. The functions of a human body are analogous to those of a machine 2. Sometimes love is kind of like a journey 3. He was behaving literally like a madman Example 1 is a straightforward case where the speaker makes her intention to use a metaphor explicit, and signals the listener to interpret it as such, with the adjective analogous (Wee, 2005a: 229). In Example 2, the speaker appears to be hedging, or ‘tuning’ her metaphoric description of love as a journey (cf. Glucksberg & Keysar, 1993) with the adverbial expressions sometimes and kind of like, which tells the listener that there are limits to the source-target comparison. Example 3 describes the opposite situation where literally is ironically used to ‘upgrade’ metaphoricity by emphasising the tremendous resemblance between the subject’s behaviour and that of a madman (Goatly, 1997). Used in these ways, the italicised elements are examples of what have been aptly called signalling, or tuning devices. They have been observed to occur in proximity with metaphoric expressions across a variety of discourse genres, both spoken and written (Cameron & Deignan, 2003; Goatly, 1997). The types, functions, and distributions of signalling/tuning devices constitute a significant aspect in the study of how language provides a contextual background to metaphors. While quantitative studies of different genres of text and talk are useful in establishing the extent of co-occurrence between metaphors and such textual devices, complementary qualitative approaches which can deliver “thick, detailed descriptions” (Cameron & Deignan 2003: 159) of their interactional dynamics have been less forthcoming. Two aspects of existing work in particular can benefit from further elaboration. Firstly, the existing analytic emphasis has been on the signalling of metaphors which are mainly confined to the clausal level, without adequate attention to the fact that metaphors are often extended to serve

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larger discourse objectives (Semino, 2008; Wee, 2005a). Secondly, because of the exclusive concern with how the phenomenon of metaphoricity is modulated by textual devices, it becomes easy to overlook how the co-occurrence of metaphors and textual devices might be motivated by their mutual service of these larger discourse objectives, in which both are embedded. Chapter 7 of this book attempts to address these gaps by examining the signalling of metaphors with extended instantiations in psychotherapeutic talk. Among other functions, extended metaphors are commonly used by both therapists and patients to construe and communicate abstract or complex concepts encountered during therapy. I revisit the notion of metaphor types (Chapter 4), which describe ‘strategic junctures’ in the progressive development of extended metaphors, and analyse examples in which these junctures are flagged by discourse markers (e.g. you know, I mean), which are themselves known to provide vital pragmatic links in unfolding discourse (Fraser, 1999; Schiffrin, 2001). Besides offering a novel characterisation of discourse markers as a type of metaphor signalling/tuning device, I also hope to broaden the existing analytic focus from the signalling of metaphoricity in isolated clausal units, to the mutual functional constitution of both metaphoric expressions and discourse markers within a larger discourse context (Ochs, 1996). This approach accords with recent work from the perspective of construction grammar, which suggests that interactional phenomena traditionally conceived as auxiliary (e.g. discourse markers, tag questions, reformulations) have their properties driven by higher levels of socio-cognitive discursive representation (Fischer, 2010). Such analytic directions are necessary if we are to seriously entertain the premise that metaphors are grounded in, and “emerge” from their immediate discursive environments (Cameron & Deignan, 2006). 2.7 The prescriptive aim: Contributions to psychotherapy I have argued in the above sections for the profitability of investigating metaphors in psychotherapeutic discourse, in line with the descriptive aim of this book. However, metaphor researchers and discourse analysts are increasingly faced with the question of reciprocity; i.e. how their theoretical knowledge can contribute to the activities from which they derive their data. The potential for reciprocity seems especially apparent in activities where language use takes on a salient prescriptive dimension, as is the case for the technique driven enterprise of psychotherapy. As mentioned in Chapter 1, researchers have noticed the plentiful use of metaphors by both therapists and patients in a variety of therapeutic situations, attributable to the demanding nature of psychotherapy which transcends the assumptions



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

of individual therapeutic philosophies. This implies the possibility of articulating a coherent framework for metaphor deployment which is “generalisable across theoretical orientations” (Wickman et al., 1999: 389). However, an important prerequisite for this task is for psychotherapists to arrive at an adequate level of uniformity and depth in their collective understanding of metaphor – a subject matter hardly native to academic disciplines which promote psychotherapy (e.g. clinical psychology). I now provide a condensed summary of how metaphor use has been theorised, measured, and evaluated within psychotherapeutic circles. I suggest that this collective body of work points towards an absence of consensus regarding the nature of metaphor, as well as an absence of depth in appreciating its nuanced theoretical aspects. Following McMullen’s (1996) caution that we are still some distance away from discovering the causal mechanism(s) behind metaphor use and therapeutic change, I proceed to suggest that a discourse analytic approach focusing on situated instances of metaphor use might turn out to be more informative instead. 2.7.1 Uniformity and depth: Rethinking the mechanism of metaphor Psychotherapeutic interest in figurative speech and thought dates back to the founding days of psychoanalysis (Freud, 1915; Lacan, 1977), as therapists grapple with the “apparently conflicting demands of facilitating acceptance of the patient’s experience and the need to allow them to consider alternative ways of thinking about their self, experience and future” (A. Beck in Stott et al., 2010). The bulk of therapeutic research into metaphors has focused on explicating their range of functions in psychotherapy, and the relationship between metaphor use and common indicators of therapeutic efficacy (i.e. psychotherapy process variables). The following are some commonly investigated questions. 1. How metaphors contribute to the diagnosis of patients, and the prognosis of their progress and recovery (Goncalves, 1994; Goncalves & Craine, 1990; Ingram, 1996; Jasper, 2007) 2. How metaphors help build a stimulating, collaborative relationship between therapist and patient (Angus, 1996; Guidano, 1995; Lenrow, 1966; Stine, 2005; Zindel, 2001) 3. How metaphors instigate therapeutically crucial shifts in patients’ emotional attitudes (M. Evans, 1988; Muran & DiGuiseppe, 1990; Rasmussen & Angus, 1996) 4. How metaphors facilitate the recall of key therapeutic moments (Donnelly & Dumas, 1997; Martin, Cummings, & Hallberg, 1992)

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5. How metaphors help manage age (Burns, 2004; Carrey, 2007; Mills & Crawley, 1986) and/or cultural differences (Abernethy, 2002; Dwairy, 2009; Dwairy & Van Sickle, 1996; McMullen & Conway, 1996) between therapists and patients 6. How the use of metaphors relates with process variables such as the occurrence of insights, helpfulness ratings, and patient experiencing (Barlow et al., 1977; Hill & Regan, 1991) There have been both quantitative studies, which attempt to correlate patterns of metaphor use by therapists and patients with indicators of therapeutic outcome (McMullen, 1989; McMullen & Conway, 1994; Rowat, Stefano, & Drapeau, 2008; Stuart, 1997), and qualitative ones, which provide thematic interpretations of metaphors across particularly illustrative samples of therapeutic talk (Angus & Korman, 2002; Angus & Rennie, 1988, 1989; Keller-Cohen & Gordon, 2003). Closer to the genre of popular psychology, much has also been written about how familiar everyday images such as gardens, alphabet soup, and bicycle rides can be recommended as pre-packaged ‘stock metaphors’ to help patients conceptualise therapeutically relevant target topics such as their personalities, life experiences, and emotional states (Blenkiron, 2010; Burns, 2001, 2004; Kottler & Carlson, 2009; Loue, 2008; Stott et al., 2010). The theoretical foundation of many such studies is typically traceable to some hypothesised model describing the relationship between metaphor, cognition, and therapeutic processes, which obligatorily draws from the pivotal tenets of cognitive metaphor theories (e.g. Kopp, 1995; Stott et al., 2010; Teasdale, 1993; Wickman et al., 1999). While there is no lack of research on metaphors in therapy, a closer reading reveals a critical lack of definitional consistency among researchers. This would seem largely due to the pragmatically driven concerns of therapists to make their treatments more effective or appealing, which obscures the need to pay greater attention to the finer technicalities of figurative language and thought. An example of this pragmatic tendency can be seen from debates between the interpretive approach (Bettelheim, 1977; Sharpe, 1950; Siegelman, 1990) and the communicative approach (Erickson & Rossi, 1976/80; Lankton, 1987), where the main issue lies with whether therapists should merely interpret patients’ metaphors, or actively suggest and communicate metaphors to patients. How the metaphors themselves constitute a matter of theoretical concern is left implicit and presumed to be less important. In their informative survey of the literature, Long and Lepper (2008) highlight the absence of sustained consensus about what counts as metaphorical as a main reason why the type of studies described above often yield contradictory results, or defy cross-comparison altogether. Some researchers partly base the definition and classification of metaphors upon their characteristics in the therapeutic context, such as Siegelman’s (1990) distinction between key, conventional



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

and novel metaphors, where the former is defined as any metaphor which “encapsulates the patient’s view of themselves or their life and that can serve as a marker of change”.12 Others rely on the less therapeutically intrinsic distinction between novel and frozen metaphors (Amira, 1982; Barlow, Kerlin, & Pollio, 1971; Pollio & Barlow, 1975), while Long and Lepper themselves (2008) classify all instances of figurative language (e.g. metonymies) as metaphors. Terminological proliferation aside, many examples classified as conventional or frozen (e.g. bursting with joy; Pollio & Barlow, 1975: 238) would likely be regarded instead as “clearly motivated by vitally alive metaphorical schemes of thought, or conceptual metaphors” (Pragglejaz Group, 2007: 33; italics mine) by contemporary metaphor analysts. This leads one to suspect that a significant extent of non-agreement exists not just over the categories used, but the process of categorisation itself. Moreover, since live figurative expressions are of greater therapeutic interest, as Pollio and Barlow themselves argue (1975: 242), the classification scheme used in their studies might have caused many pertinent instances to be overlooked. This is particularly unfortunate for qualitative studies, which generally aim to elucidate the significance of individual metaphors, or metaphorical themes. It seems that rather than providing a way to seek useful commonalities between different schools of psychotherapy, as envisioned by Wickman and Kopp (cf. Magnavita, 2006, 2008; Rigazio-Digilio, Goncalves, & Ivey, 1996), the lack of definitional consensus over metaphor impedes inter-school dialogue and understanding instead (McMullen, 1996). Related to this problem of excessive width is what might be called the problem of inadequate depth. It seems that much of the psychotherapy literature which purportedly advocates the use and management of metaphors have been indifferent towards parallel advancements in metaphor theory, despite their relevance and potential applicability. As an example, it is often suggested that patients’ metaphors could reveal the structure of their “beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviour, and relationships…” (Kopp, 1995: 102) because metaphors draw upon physical, social, and emotional experiences (M. Evans, 1988). While this might be broadly consistent with cognitivist theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), the psychotherapeutic literature misses the more nuanced question of whether metaphors are ultimately grounded in common embodied experience, differentiated socio-cultural and individual experience, or someplace in between. This question is surely relevant to the import of metaphor in psychotherapy, for if metaphors turn out to be fundamentally embodied, they may be limited in their 12. Examples of key metaphors in capital letters: Therapist: YOU FELL OFF THE ROOF WHEN SHE DIED. Patient: Yeah, I know I was very you know – it’s [Sighs.] well I FEEL AGAIN ROBBED because I didn’t get to know my Mum, didn’t actually get to know her you know.

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ability to generate an individual, or even culture-specific profile of patient and patient groups (cf. Kövecses, 2001). Some studies promote the use of metaphors but only discuss their apparent culture-specificity (Abernethy, 2002; Ahammed, 2010; Dwairy, 2009), without demonstrating a consideration of the potentially wider, or narrower grounding of metaphors. The following chapters of this book will highlight other theoretical points which have likewise received inadequate attention in psychotherapy research. While issues with width and depth jeopardise the validity of theoretical constructs in psychotherapy research, a still more fundamental challenge lies in explicating a causal mechanism between metaphor use and therapeutic change, and avoiding the premature interpretation of correlation as causation. McMullen (1996: 241) soberly points out in a summary of studies spanning two decades that the task of finding this elusive mechanism is still being deferred to “further research”. She proceeds to suggest that, with the current state of knowledge, the strongest claim one could make about the therapeutic efficacy of metaphor is correlational, in that “certain patterns (of metaphor use) are more typical of successful than unsuccessful cases” (McMullen, 1996: 249). Even though methodologies can be designed to investigate the specific impact of metaphors (Martin et al., 1992; McCurry & Hayes, 1992), these would involve manipulating therapists’ utterances across experimental and control groups. Such an approach would not only violate the non-coercive ideal of psychotherapy (Siegelman, 1990), but might ultimately be misguided given previous findings which suggest that patients do not always respond well to therapist-induced metaphors even in highly successful cases (Hill & Regan, 1991; McMullen, 1989). As a linguist and metaphor researcher untrained in psychotherapy, I am not in a position to propose any mechanism governing metaphor use and therapeutic change. Linguists and metaphor researchers can however offer two things, as alluded to above. Firstly, we can take a more situated, descriptive look at metaphors in psychotherapy, the characteristics of which should be understood with respect to the ongoing therapeutic context, rather than purely as an operationalised abstraction. It will be upon such “naturalistically occurring sequences of metaphor” (McMullen, 1996: 250) that I discuss the prescriptive implications of my analysis in subsequent chapters. Secondly, we can think about how advancements in metaphor theory understandably overlooked by psychotherapy researchers are in fact very much relevant for many practical concerns in the clinic.



Chapter 2.  The nature of psychotherapeutic discourse

2.8 Summary This chapter has argued for the robustness of psychotherapeutic discourse as a context for the interrogation of key theoretical aspects in metaphor theory. Metaphors are deployed by therapeutic participants for a variety of reasons, and are furthermore modulated by contextual parameters such as the subjective experiences of patients, the theoretical background and discourse objectives of therapy, and the interactional dynamics between therapists and patients. The ways in which these parameters shape the nature of metaphor in psychotherapy will be explored in subsequent chapters, with each chapter focusing on one theoretical aspect. Moving from the descriptive concerns of discourse analysts to the prescriptive concerns of psychotherapists, I also suggested how a discourse analytic approach, which understands metaphors as grounded in situated contexts of deployment, offers an alternative perspective to researchers seeking global causal mechanisms between metaphor use and therapeutic change.

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chapter 3

The ideational resources of metaphors Embodied, cultural, and individual-specific knowledge* 3.1 Introduction This chapter is a case study of how ideational resources theorised at different levels (i.e. embodiment, culture, and individual experience) are simultaneously and creatively drawn upon in the construction and elaboration of metaphors during psychotherapeutic talk. While theoretical accounts suggest the inseparability of these levels in constituting metaphors and other cognitive structures, there are relatively few studies which have examined how this inseparability is instantiated in actual text and talk, carried out for specific purposes such as psychotherapy. I first draw attention to recent strands of independently conducted research which converge on the themes of stability and variability of metaphors, in both micro-level and macro-level discourse contexts. I suggest that in the context of psychotherapeutic talk, stability of inferential patterns facilitates the emergence of a problem-solution framework over the course of therapy, which allows therapist and patient to agree on how the main therapeutic issue is construed and resolved. This has implications for the clinical practice of case formulation, whereby the therapist, sometimes in collaboration with the patient, arrives at a hypothesis about the “causes, precipitants, and maintaining influences” (Eells, 1997: 1) of the latter’s problems, and devises a treatment plan thereafter. Using data from Kopp (1995), I then analyse extracts from four near-consecutive therapeutic sessions involving a single therapist-patient pair, to show how various ideational resources are creatively combined to construct a problem-solution framework, and to gradually accomplish therapeutic goals – chief amongst which is to instil in the patient a sense of agency and control over his problems (Drewery & McKenzie, 1999). I turn in the second half of the chapter to the prescriptive aim, where I refer to two proposed psychotherapeutic models of metaphor deployment – Dwairy’s (1997, 2009) biopsychosocial model of metaphor therapy, and Kopp and Craw’s (1998) interview * Some parts of this chapter have been published as Notes toward a cognitive sociolinguistics: Perspectives from discourse in context in the edited volume Sociolinguistics (Nova Science Publishers) (Yamaguchi & Tay, 2011).

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protocol. I will focus on how knowledge of the complementarity between different ideational bases of metaphor can strengthen therapeutic procedures aimed at eliciting metaphors from patients. 3.2 ‘Stabilities’ in metaphoric discourse Cameron and her associates have recently developed the idea that metaphor deployment, across both short-term interactional discourse and longer-term recurrences in broader socio-cultural contexts, has properties which resemble those of dynamical systems (Cameron et al., 2009; Gibbs & Cameron, 2008; LarsenFreeman & Cameron, 2008). In a nutshell, this means that metaphors emerge from complex interactions between the knowledge and belief systems of speakers/discourse producers. These processes of interaction are ‘self-organising’, such that across any time period of metaphor use, certain aspects of metaphors may acquire an emergent stability, and exert an influence on subsequent metaphor production. Examples include the formation of conventional metaphors over an extended period of time (Cameron & Deignan, 2006), and the emergence of preferred metaphoric conceptualisations at the dyadic level of conversation (Cameron et al., 2009: 67). A relevant point for the present discussion is that conceptualisations which stabilise during spoken interaction are not necessarily the result of speakers drawing upon and being constrained by fixed conceptual mappings. Instead, stabilities can also emerge from acts of creativity, as speakers combine various ideational resources to construct metaphors. Independently of Cameron et al., research on discourse metaphors, or “relatively stable metaphorical mappings that function as a key framing device within a particular discourse over a certain period of time” (Zinken et al., 2008: 364), have examined the factors which contribute to the longevity and persuasiveness of framing devices such as the state is a machine and disease is war (Chilton, 1996a; Hellsten, 2003, 2005; Musolff, 2008). While such discourse metaphors are, following Lakoff and Johnson (1999), routinely analysable as componentially motivated by image-schemas and additional layers of socio-cultural knowledge, researchers have suggested that these components contribute differently to the objectives of discourse metaphors. For example, the relative absence of variation in embodied image schematic concepts provides an important semblance of “meaning consistency” (Musolff, 2008: 319) over time. Musolff ’s analysis of the ‘heart of Europe’ metaphor, which has been used to describe various countries in European political discourse, is a case in point. Heart-related metaphors, which have evolved from depicting geographical to functional centrality, and from bearing positive connotations to negative ones such as illness and disease, are nonetheless commonly



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

motivated by a centre/periphery image schematic structure, such that a thread of intelligibility runs through the metaphor’s reinterpretations. This in turn increases its chances of ‘survival’ in discourse history. Research on discourses surrounding the recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease and SARS (Zinken et al., 2008: 366; Larson, 2008; Larson, Nerlich, & Wallis, 2005) have also highlighted how image schematic patterns (e.g. container, force, balance) structure and promote particular metaphoric conceptualisations of the diseases. One important point made is that, since image schematic knowledge is presumably embodied and ‘naturalistic’, it can be strategically used to generate wider consensus regarding the subject matter at hand. A similar point can be made about the functional role of cultural knowledge. Since discourse metaphors reflect and promote privileged points of view regarding salient social issues, one can expect discourse producers to maximise their legitimacy by drawing upon “cultural commonplaces, cultural myths and salient events of the past” (Zinken et al., 2008: 367), as well as knowledge of contemporary events. Researchers have examined how different social stereotypes about houses lead to divergent understandings of the europe is a house metaphor (Chilton & Ilyin, 1993) among European communities, and how metaphors of rape are discursively compounded with other atrocities as a rhetorical device to justify war (Rohrer, 1995). The functional utility of cultural knowledge can be emphasised here, in that the desired responses evoked by these metaphors are readily attributable to peoples’ emotional reactions and attitudes towards socio-culturally grounded concepts such as rape or housing. While discourse metaphors reveal how embodied inferential patterns interact with potent cultural imageries, the present analysis of psychotherapeutic discourse additionally considers the role of unique individual knowledge and experiences as a robust source for metaphors (Kövecses, 2010b; Ritchie, 2006; Shinebourne & Smith, 2010; Zindel, 2001). Existing therapeutic literature on metaphor use often assumes that personal issues and life events constitute metaphoric targets to be conceptualised via other source concepts, but has overlooked the possibility that these can also comprise a useful inventory from which source concepts can be drawn. By examining the interaction between embodied, cultural, and individual knowledge as ideational resources in metaphors deployed across four near-consecutive therapy sessions, I aim to answer the following questions: What type(s) of stabilities emerge from this interaction, and how can they be related to the unfolding therapeutic work? Furthermore, do different types of ideational resources contribute in different ways to the prescriptive aim at hand? I will show how therapist and patient collaboratively and consensually arrive at a stable problem-solution framework built upon the image schematic concepts of interior, surface, and exterior (i.e. the container image-schema). Besides instantiating what Hoey

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(2001) identifies as a “culturally popular” discursive pattern, this problem-solution ‘conceptual pact’ (Brennan & Clark, 1996) weaves a thread of continuity across an otherwise evolving metaphoric scenario, in which the patient is progressively construed as attaining control over his problems. The analysis thus demonstrates how in psychotherapy, “the criss-crossing of ideas in which new meanings are continually evolving” (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988: 372) can be grounded upon more stable inferential and discursive patterns. The second half of the chapter subsequently shows how being aware of the interplay between different ideational resources could help therapists gain more strategic control over the elaboration of therapeutically useful metaphors. My demonstration of the functional interaction between different ideational resources of metaphors, and how that contributes to the progression of therapy, is not strictly based upon any particular model of discourse processing. It instead abides by several generic and relatively uncontroversial assumptions shared across these models, such as the fact that people construct a mental representation of the discourse (i.e. text and talk) they encounter, that this representation comprises of concepts and information both within and outside the discourse, that inferences derived on the basis of these further develop the representation, and that in the case of dialogic interaction, potential disparities between the mental representations held by interlocutors must be managed for communication to be successful (McNamara & Magliano, 2009; Tomlin, Forrest, Pu, & Kim, 1997). It has been suggested that the use of metaphor in spontaneous conversation not only reflects these processes particularly well, but also facilitates them such that a high degree of conversational coherence can be attained (D. Ponterotto, 2003). While Ponterotto’s analysis focused on how shared conceptual metaphors between speakers serve to ‘bind’ their mental representations together, the present analysis focuses on how the inferential schemas of metaphor at its embodied, cultural, and idiosyncratic levels contribute functionally towards the goal of therapeutic discourse; that is, to arrive at a mutually sanctioned, positive mental representation of the patient’s predicament. 3.3 Analysis 3.3.1 Background of therapist and patient Some background information about the therapist-patient pair will now be provided. Details pertaining to the patient are especially relevant, given the present focus on how his life experiences provide an inventory of source concepts



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

for metaphor construction.1 The therapist had a self professed interest in the use of metaphors as a therapeutic resource, and provided her own descriptive commentary, with no particular theoretical inclination, on the metaphors used by her and the patient in Kopp (1995). At the time of publication she was director of a paediatric psychology division in an American hospital. The patient, a 21-year old homosexual male, was described as articulate and enthusiastically engaged in the therapeutic process, although at times he also exhibited suicidal tendencies. He was raised as an adopted child of his now-divorced parents, and held vivid childhood memories of his father’s constant spousal and alcohol abuse. He also revealed how his father had routinely offered to share pornographic materials with him. He was diagnosed with agoraphobia,2 and reportedly sought therapy to learn how to deal with his loneliness, sense of isolation, and come to terms with his homosexuality. He pursued creative painting and writing as hobbies outside of his occupation as a store clerk. As we will see, the entities, events, and circumstances represented in his artwork, together with images from his dreams and memories from his childhood, were to become significant elements deployed in the construction of metaphors used to conceptualise and communicate his predicament. 3.3.2 Session 1: “There’s this giant wall around me” 1. Patient: Last night I thought about it again – about suicide. I don’t know why. I’m so afraid to die. It’s just that there is this giant wall around me… Oh, I don’t know. 2. Therapist: Tell me about the wall. 3. Patient: There’s not much to tell. It’s all around me. I shout and shout, but nobody hears me! Oh, why am I here; it’s all so futile anyway. I can’t push the wall away. There’s no way to get rid of it. Can coming here help me get rid of the wall? 4. Therapist: Maybe we don’t have to get rid of it. What if we were able to help you find a way to put a door in it?

1. Depending on the analytic focus, detailed background information on the personal histories of individual patients will not always be provided in later chapters. 2. Defined in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition) as “an anxiety disorder characterized by intense fear related to being in situations from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing, or in which help might not be available in the event of a panic attack or panic symptoms”. See Wittchen, Gloster, Beesdo-Baum, Fava, & Craske (2010) for a review and proposal of definitional updates.

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Prior to this extract the patient had confided that he was feeling intensely lonely, and contemplated suicide in order to end his suffering (Kopp, 1995: 68). In these short but therapeutically significant lines, he describes his sense of isolation as being surrounded by a “giant wall” (Line 1) which blocks him from the outside world (Line 3). The wall metaphor is an apt example of how motivated associations between source and target (i.e. being surrounded by a wall and feeling isolated) can be differently explained. Cognitivists would claim that the metaphoric scenario of being surrounded by a wall, or any such structure, is motivated by the container image schema, where the structural elements of interior, exterior and boundary organise the construal of our subjective experiences of being in and out of certain phenomenological states (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987). In this case, the patient expresses the futility of his situation by emphasising that the boundary is an insurmountable obstacle (giant wall [Line 1], I can’t push the wall away [Line 3]). An image schematic analysis, however, cannot fully explain why a wall is selected over some other structure. It has in fact been noted that walls as specific source entities for the target topic of interpersonal problems demonstrate “remarkable redundancy” in psychotherapeutic discourse (Ferrara, 1994: 129). Apart from being incidental instantiations of ‘containment’, walls are also salient exemplars of divisive structures throughout history. A cursory list of examples include city walls, prison walls, Hadrian’s Wall, The Great Wall of China, and the Berlin Wall, each invoking a distinct set of connotations. General socio-cultural knowledge of walls and the role of particularly well known examples as socially and historically significant structures which have separated people from each other could therefore directly motivate their association with feelings of isolation, without invoking individual embodied experiences of physical containment. It is noticeable that the therapist emphasises neither aspect of the wall metaphor, allowing the patient to elaborate it as he wishes (Line 2). The patient’s desire to “push the wall away” and “get rid of it” (Line 3) confirms his conceptualisation of the wall as an undesirable confining entity. The therapist’s suggestion in Line 4 that the solution is to “put a door in it” accomplishes several noteworthy objectives. Firstly, consistent with ‘client-centred’ approaches which emphasise the validity of patients’ conceptualisations (Rogers, 1986), it affirms the patient’s metaphor and indicates the therapist’s concurrence that the wall should be eliminated. Secondly, it establishes the therapeutic utility of the implied container image-schema, such that even if the patient had used “wall” in an entirely conventionalised sense in Line 1, the structural elements of interior, exterior, and boundary are now actively proposed as a problem-solution framework. The patient, situated in the interior of the wall boundary, must somehow find a way to move to the exterior. On its own, however, this highly schematic inferential framework is unlikely to be convincing or memorable as an ideational resource for the patient to think



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

about his issues. Other materials and ideational resources would be needed to enrich and develop its therapeutic potential. In the upcoming Session 2, the patient is led to discuss a painting inspired by his recent dream. The dream and painting constitute individual-specific and idiosyncratic conceptual materials which are to become crucial elements in developing this inferential framework. 3.3.3 Session 2: “I am Sara” 1. Patient: Well here it is… a painting of Sara, just like I promised. 2. Therapist: Thank you for bringing it! Tell me about it. 3. Patient: Well, here is Sara, in the bottom left-hand corner. I painted her pretty large, bigger than when I saw her in my dream a few weeks ago. Remember the dream? 4. Therapist: Yes, of course. Go on. 5. Patient: Well anyway, there she is. Doesn’t she look serene? 6. Therapist: The detail is so fine. 7. Patient: Do you notice how she is standing in the light. She’s always in the light. The light seems to radiate out of her. That’s one thing I don’t understand. If she’s me or I’m her, what is that light? I don’t feel like I’m in the light. 8. Therapist: What if the light was the healthy part of you that keeps you going and hopeful even when things look bleak? 9. Patient: If I thought there could be a healthy part of me shining in the light and radiating light and peace, it would give me hope to go on. Maybe I could accept myself as… 10. Therapist: …as gay? 11. Patient: As gay… that’s the part I have an impossible time with. I can’t even say it without stumbling over the words. 12. Therapist: I notice she is only drawn from the waist up. 13. Patient: Yes. That’s all of her I can see. I tried to paint lower, but the colours didn’t work. But the top of her is beautiful, so I just painted that part. She also doesn’t have any arms. I didn’t give her arms. 14. Therapist: I get the feeling that she would feel weak and vulnerable without arms. What’s your feeling about her not having arms? 15. Patient: Actually, from the back I guess her shape would look like a tombstone… You’re right though, definitely weak and defenceless. I hadn’t thought of that. 16. Therapist: Almost dead without those arms. 17. Patient: Maybe, but not quite. You see? Behind her. In the dreams there was the skull of Death stalking her, but in this picture, there is no Death. It is still very dark, but Death isn’t around anymore. Maybe he is hiding

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somewhere behind a tree or something, but he’s not close anymore. And in my dream there was a castle in the distance, but there is no castle here either. It still looks mystical and very dark, but no more Death. And no castle. 18. Therapist: What do you suppose happened to Death and the castle? 19. Patient: I don’t know. I just didn’t feel like painting them anymore. I paint what I feel and they weren’t part of what I felt. They’re just gone; I don’t know where. 20. Therapist: How would you change the image of Sara if you could? 21. Patient: She would develop arms. 22. Therapist: What do you suppose it would take for Sara to develop arms? 23. Patient: She would have to be free. As I think about it, I think maybe she has arms growing, but we just can’t see them yet – embryonic arms. 24. Therapist: There’s an interesting idea! How will the arms grow? 25. Patient: I’m not sure how that works. I think it’s important to stay in the light. I don’t know exactly, but light helps things grow. 26. Therapist: I’m interested to know – If you could change this painting in any way, how would you change it? 27. Patient: Hmm. Good question. If I could change it I would paint her whole. She would have a whole body, and all of her would be in the light. 28. Therapist: And if you could take a snapshot of just a part of that new painting, what would the snapshot look like? 29. Patient: It would be of Sara. She would have a whole body and… she would be dancing. 30. Therapist: When you say she would be dancing, I get an image of her spinning like a ballerina, up on one toe, with her skirts swirling around her. 31. Patient: It’s funny you should say that. It’s just what I was thinking. Spinning like a ballerina, with her arms outstretched… she would have arms. She would be graceful, and swirling. She would be free. 32. Therapist: That would be good. Thank you for sharing her with me. It will be interesting to see how Sara develops. 33. Patient: You’re right. And to watch her arms grow.

In this session, the conversation is directed towards a painting done by the patient, which was inspired by a recurrent dream. In the dream, an armless girl named Sara was stalked by the “skull of Death” at a distance from a castle. The painting depicts Sara, drawn only from the waist up, standing in the light. The decision to focus on something seemingly irrelevant to the patient’s immediate concerns was strategic, as the therapist comments that, in view of recent “emotionally charged sessions” (including Session 1 above), “spending time talking about his art work seemed a way to be supportive and to slow the pace of therapy” (Kopp, 1995: 73). From the



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

present analytic perspective, this also allows an exploration of highly personalised conceptualisations of the patient’s subjective predicament. Where metaphors and symbols are present in dreams, artwork, or any such creative material, the associations between source and target concepts are as likely to be idiosyncratic as they are conventional (Lakoff, 2001). This is due not only to the relatively unconstrained nature of visual modalities (Forceville, 1998, 2006), but also to the uniqueness of individual experiences. A valuable window is opened into the values, beliefs, and attitudes of patients when these metaphors are collaboratively interpreted. One important therapeutic objective accomplished in this session is that through the focused discussion on the dream and painting, which culminated in a mutual decision to “see how Sara develops” (Line 32), the therapist appears to have inspired in the patient a sense of optimism and willingness to confront his issues. The therapist guides the patient to interpret Sara standing in the light as a source of hope and acceptance of his sexuality (Lines 8–11), and prompts the patient to consider “changing” the vulnerable image of Sara and to focus on the positive changes (Line 20, 26, 28). One particular change highlighted by the patient is the desire to “watch her arms grow” (Line 33). The therapist in fact reported some positive changes in the patient’s life shortly after the present session. He claimed that he was able to find a partner who did not pressure him into sexual activity, thus giving him “an opportunity to come to a greater acceptance of himself as gay” (Kopp, 1995: 76). The imperative of instilling optimism and hope in patients has a long history in counselling psychology (J. Frank, 1968; Rogers, 1977), and is a central tenet of the influential positive psychology movement (Seligman, 1998; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). In the context of the present session, a large part of this has been accomplished by analysing and interpreting the armless girl Sara by means of fairly conventional metaphors such as light representing hope, physical freedom representing emotional freedom, and so on. At this level we can already observe how an individualised and highly idiosyncratic association between the fictive Sara and the patient’s self can be reinterpreted by more conventional metaphoric associations. In the wider context of the overall progress of therapy, as we shall see, elements such as Sara, the skull of Death, and the castle in the distance will also come to be opportunistically recruited as elaborative elements of the container inferential schema, as it gradually emerges in the course of the therapy. The present analysis also raises a few pertinent points about the psychotherapeutic interpretation of dreams. Sigmund Freud (1915) famously claimed that dreams represent unconscious ideational content whose symbolisation of the ‘waking state’ can be systematically characterised. In principle at least, every dream should therefore encode some correspondent significance for waking reality that

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can be identified and analysed. However, as we have seen, the patient’s dream was discussed not so much with the intention of analysing its potential correspondences with reality, but as a more open-ended platform from which suitable ideational resources such as Sara could be spotlighted and re-interpreted. Also, rather than having the therapist as an expert interpreter, both parties worked together to construct a shared representation of the unfolding discourse, in accordance with the collaborative ideal of psychotherapy (Ferrara, 1994: 104), such that “a sense of shared purpose and focus in the therapy relationship” is created (Angus, 1996: 81). The therapist’s role in changing the patient’s initial pessimistic construal of the painting by selectively focusing on Sara and guiding him through its metaphoric reinterpretation is especially noteworthy in this regard. In the upcoming session, the patient continues to relate more of his personal experiences. In so doing, the available inventory of ideational resources continues to expand. We will see how this coincides with the emerging relevance of the container problem-solution framework, and how the inventory of ideational resources is selectively drawn upon to instantiate its inferential logic. A general point can be made that, as therapists become progressively more familiar with their patients’ circumstances and more conceptual materials become available, it also becomes necessary for them to be selective about which ones to continue focusing on. The previously salient Sara, for example, loses its prominence from the next session onwards, while the relatively under-discussed castle in the distance and skull of Death regain considerable prominence for strategic reasons. 3.3.4 Session 3: “The little boy is locked up in me!” 1. Patient: I feel like I have always had to hold up my own sky. I can never let go or it will all come crashing down. Even as a young child, I was holding up that sky… but it didn’t seem so heavy then. 2. Therapist: You couldn’t feel secure if you thought the sky would collapse if you let go. 3. Patient: Things almost did collapse once. 4. Therapist: Really? Tell me about it. 5. Patient: I have this memory that just came to me. I was five or six years old. My mother thought my dad was having an affair. She decided this day to confirm it. She put me and my little brother into the car and drove to this woman’s house. Sure enough his car was parked out front. My mom parked behind his car and broke down sobbing. Then she started to throw up. I was afraid she was going to take me and my brother into that apartment to confront him. I didn’t want to do that. She threw up and threw up. I didn’t know somebody could throw up



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

so much. I just sat there frozen. It was kind of unreal. I didn’t know what to do. I felt out of it. I was really afraid of what would happen to me and my brother if she left my father. I knew I was adopted and I wondered if they would send me back. It was really clear to me then that I wasn’t part of their family and didn’t belong. Then she wrote him a note saying that she knew. She told me to go and put it on his car, under the windshield wiper. I remember that I hated that. I was afraid he would see me, but I did it. Then we left and drove home. 6. Therapist: If you could take a snapshot of that memory, what would it look like? 7. Patient: It would be me walking up to the car to put the note there like she said. While I was walking, I vowed that I would never grow up. I would die first. 8. Therapist: If you could change the memory in any way, how would you change it? 9. Patient:  I would have died then. It wasn’t scary to me then. After that experience, I was still really a little boy, but I thought like an old man. I still do. 10. Therapist: What happened to the little boy? 11. Patient: He went away. Part of him did die, I think. 12. Therapist: He died? 13. Patient: Maybe not dead, but he might as well have been dead. I guess he just got sealed off. 14. Therapist: When you say “sealed off ”, I get an image of the castle you described in your dream. You said you didn’t know what it meant or who lived there. I wonder if he got sealed off there – in the castle. 15. Patient: Behind thick walls. 16. Therapist: And maybe outside the castle… 17. Patient: Death was stalking. The little boy said he’d rather die than grow up. Maybe death was always out there waiting. It makes sense. 18. Therapist: What did the little boy do behind the castle walls all these years? 19. Patient: I guess he sat in the dark and was very quiet. 20. Therapist: Until now. 21. Patient: Until now. 22. Therapist: Where is the little boy now? 23. Patient: In the castle… Oh God! 24. Therapist: What? 25. Patient: I’m the castle! The little boy is locked up in me! God, I didn’t know! 26. Therapist: What is the little boy doing in the castle now? 27. Patient: Lately, he has been creating so much mischief. Why would he do that? It has caused me so much pain! 28. Therapist: What do you suppose would make the little boy act out and create mischief?

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29. Patient: I don’t know. 30. Therapist: Think about it for a minute. Why does any little boy create mischief? 31. Patient: He wants to be seen… He wants to be heard. 32. Therapist: What if you let the little boy out for just a few minutes. Could you do that? Just for a minute? 33. Patient: 34. Therapist: Imagine him sitting here with us, maybe in that chair. You can talk to him. 35. Patient: I don’t know where to begin. 36. Therapist: You have so many feelings. 37. Patient: So does he. 38. Therapist: What does he want to say? 39. Patient: He just wants to cry. 40. Therapist: What makes him cry? 41. Patient: His innocence is gone. She took it away. 42. Therapist: She? 43. Patient: His mother. She stole his innocence and it will never come back. The innocence is lost. He was young and fun and full of smiles. He was happy and she took it away. 44. Therapist: How did she take it away? 45. Patient: He doesn’t remember. Maybe just pulling him into her troubles – making him her little man. He didn’t want to be her little man. 46. Therapist: What else does the little boy say? 47. Patient: He wants to come out of the castle but he doesn’t know who he is anymore. He wants to come out and be a little boy and be loved. But he’s scared, and he doesn’t know how to get out. And I don’t know how to help him… I’m afraid to let him out. 48. Therapist: It’s scary to think of letting him out. 49. Patient: Yes. I wouldn’t know what to do. 50. Therapist: What if there was a real little boy here with us and he was scared, and looking to you for help, what would you do? 51. Patient: I would pick him up and hold him. I would embrace him. That’s it, isn’t it? I have to love the little boy so he can come out and grow up? How do I let him grow up? How do I get him to catch up to my body? Do I have to do something special? 52. Therapist: What if you find a way to let him out of the castle so he can be in the light? In the light he will grow. 53. Patient: But I am afraid of all the mischief he could cause if he just came out all of a sudden. 54. Therapist: What if for right now you didn’t let him all the way out. What if you just left the castle doors unlocked. 55. Patient: Then maybe he could find his own way out. Slowly.



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

56. Therapist: That might be easier for you. 57. Patient: I think so. Will I know when he’s out? 58. Therapist: I think you’ll know.

This extract begins with an exploration of a significant childhood experience which appears to have had profound implications for the patient’s current emotional state. The patient describes how he has always had to “hold up (his) own sky” (Line 1) because of the lack of support from those around him. He then recalls a specific episode when “things almost did collapse” (Line 3),3 when he was told to deliver a note to expose his adopted father’s extra-marital affair (Line 5, cf. Lines 43, 45). In inviting the patient to “change” this unpleasant memory (Line 8), the therapist deploys LeShan’s (1977) ‘time machine’ technique, where patients attempt to reanalyse past situations with their present vantage points, in order to derive insights about how the former continues to psychologically influence the latter. The resultant conceptualisation, or a “snapshot of that memory” (Line 6), is a little boy who embodies the patient’s younger self, but bears the psychological state of his presently jaded and suicidal self. This idiosyncratic figure which might be said to represent a ‘blend’ (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002) of two time periods of the patient’s life is the latest contribution to the inventory of conceptual materials which also includes the wall, dream, and painting from previous sessions. In response to the therapist asking what happened to the little boy, the patient remarked that part of him had died, or gotten “sealed off ” (Line 13). The phrase “sealed off ” conventionally denotes the act of confining some hazardous or mysterious object within an interior space, preventing access from the outside.4 This utterance represents an important turning point in the therapy as it re-invokes the container schema established in Session 1, which subsequently becomes a key organisational element in the therapeutic discourse. Because of its suitable instantiation of the container schema, the previously unelaborated castle in the patient’s dream is now opportunistically recruited by the therapist (Line 14). Over the next few turns (Lines 14–18), the therapist and patient collaboratively construct an elaborate metaphoric scenario of the boy being trapped behind the thick walls of the castle, with (the skull of) Death stalking outside – a scenario sanctioned 3. The metaphor of holding up his own sky to support himself, and the sky collapsing because of his failure to do so, similarly contains image schematic components such as support and force which could plausibly have also been elaborated as problem-solution frameworks, perhaps in conjunction with the container framework. Nevertheless, we will shortly see how the container framework prevails in this case. 4. The phrase sealed off appears 345 times in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008–). Its most frequent object collocates are area (N = 12), building (N = 10), and city (N = 10).

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by the structural elements of interior, boundary, and exterior. This conceptualisation shares image schematic logic with his original wall metaphor from Session 1, similarly depicts his intense emotional isolation from the outside world, and likewise construes the solution to his problems as escaping to the outside. It is however more vivid and personalised because it is now able to draw upon additional ideational resources which have been progressively introduced since Session 1 (the painting, dream, and childhood memory). The resultant metaphoric understanding of his predicament can now be explicated at multiple interacting levels – an embodied logic underlying the desired escape to the exterior, cultural knowledge about the ominous connotations associated with entities such as Death and mysterious castles, and idiosyncratic, autobiographical knowledge about the sufferings of the little boy. Notably, the structural elements of the container image schema provide not only an intuitive inferential pattern to construe the therapeutic problem and solution, but also draw together the otherwise mutually unrelated elements of the boy, castle, and death into a coherent scenario. It is especially noteworthy how from Lines 14–18 the therapist prompts each upcoming elaboration of the metaphoric scenario with what may be called ‘image schematic cues’ (I wonder if he got sealed off there – in the castle; maybe outside the castle; what did the little boy do behind the castle). These prepositional cues elicit from the patient the necessary instantiating components for the container schema, to arrive at a reasonably constrained mental representation of the metaphoric scenario. Thus, while the pressing question in metaphor scholarship is the relative primacy of embodied, cultural, and idiosyncratic knowledge in metaphor construction, the present functional perspective explores instead the complementary contributions each of these makes towards the prevalent discourse objective of constructing a vivid and coherent therapeutic framework. Although the metaphoric scenario elaborated thus far reflects an ideal collaborative process of meaning construction, it is still unclear how the boy’s predicament in the castle – particularly the implied solution of moving to the exterior – could translate into an applicable course of action in the patient’s current adult life. The therapist takes a step in this direction by asking what the boy did behind the castle walls “all these years” (Line 18), and what he is doing “now” (Line 20, 26). This move to elucidate the present relevance of the metaphoric scenario leads to another significant turning point in the therapeutic process. By proclaiming “I’m the castle! The little boy is locked up in me!” (Line 25), the patient makes the connection between the little boy and his present adult self, and triggers a critical shift in the therapeutic focus – a shift from defining and elaborating the problem of being metaphorically contained (i.e. the wall metaphor and the boy-in-castle metaphor), to exploring the therapeutically ideal, agentive possibility (Drewery & McKenzie, 1999) of releasing the boy from containment.



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

The re-conceptualisation of his present adult self as the castle can be regarded as a creative insight which nonetheless continues to cohere with the established problem-solution framework of containment. It is furthermore cognitively natural because both the castle and the human body can be image schematically structured in container terms, which provides a motivated basis for mapping the interior, exterior, and boundary of the former onto the latter. The resultant scenario is one where the little boy causes pain from within the patient, and the patient, as an agentive incarcerator, has the responsibility and capability of letting the boy out (Lines 26–32). The fact that the patient and boy are now construed as two discrete entities rather than a single ‘blended’ entity further allows the therapist to setup an imaginary dialogue between them (Line 34). As the boy is hypothetically “let out for just a minute” (Line 32), elaborating the imagined dialogue allows the patient to relate with the boy, talking to him and comforting him as most adults would with a distressed child (Line 51). The therapist further makes a cohering reference to their discussion of light and hope in Session 2, by suggesting that the boy will grow if let into the light (Line 52). In this way the original frustration and fear expressed by the patient with regard to attaining the solution of exteriority is gradually replaced with a sense of agency, responsibility and conviction in “letting the boy out”. Before going further, I will briefly touch upon a point of theoretical interest raised by the present case, where we witness an alternation from construing the body as contained to the body as container. Johnson (1987) and Lakoff (1987) discuss two separate sets of embodied experiences which motivate the container schema. We experience our bodies as entities moving in and out of physical containers (e.g. rooms), and as physical containers themselves (e.g. while breathing). Both these sets of experiences give rise to the abstraction of a common set of structural elements (interior, exterior, boundary), and therefore a single image schema. However, in the present case, construing the body as contained generates a markedly different set of inferences from construing the body as container. Although both conceptualisations draw upon the same structural elements and conclude that the therapeutic solution is to overcome the boundary, the former has been elaborated by details exemplifying subjective attitudes such as frustration and fear of being trapped, while the latter foregrounds notions of agency, responsibility and control. It would be interesting to investigate similar alternations for other image schemas in discourse, and how these can be related to therapeutic attempts to change “the problematic positioning of a person”, such as the fundamental issue of establishing “an agentic position in relation to the area of concern” (Drewery & McKenzie, 1999: 137). For now, we move on to the final session, where the newly emergent imperative of “letting the boy out” and attaining the solution of exteriority is reconceptualised for the final time with a metaphor of particular significance to the patient – that of being a woman and giving birth to the boy.

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3.3.5 Session 4: “I want to give birth” 1. Therapist: Are you okay? You look like you’re in pain. 2. Patient: I don’t know what just happened. Just talking about this, the adrenaline is starting now. Just like last night. And my stomach is in a knot. My heart is pounding. I feel like I’m going to die! I can hear my heart pounding. 3. Therapist: You’re not going to die, Mike, but it sounds like you’re frightened. Just like last night. Just like every night. Just take a deep breath. Don’t talk for awhile. Your heart will slow down. You’re okay. We’ll just sit here breathing slowly until you’re better. We have lots of time. Just take a deep breath and blow it out. That’s good. Slow it down. That’s it. 4. Patient: I hate this panic feeling. I’m cold inside – dry ice freezing a hole through my core. It’s the door. The memory. It’s locked. I can’t get out. 5. Therapist: You can’t get out. 6. Patient: Someone is there with me. Oh, the knot! It’s fuzzy. I’m trying but I can’t see who it is. The whole picture is fuzzy. Like very bad still shots. All out of focus. Someone is there with me. I’m naked for my bath. They are standing over me. I’m cold. I’m going to die. I can hear my heart. I don’t know who it is. My heart is racing. The little boy wants to cry. He wants to be let out. 7. Therapist: Let him cry, Mike. He needs to cry. 8. Patient: (cries for several minutes) The knot is gone; the cold is gone. I was molested, wasn’t I? This morning at breakfast, I couldn’t see the memory, but I had this idea. I thought, “This is it. I was molested.” I didn’t see the whole memory – just a shadow. But I knew. I felt it. Somebody did it to me. 9. Therapist: Sounds like it. 10. Patient: But I can’t remember who. Or what they did. 11. Therapist: You don’t have to remember now. 12. Patient: Not today. 13. Therapist: You just remember how scary it felt. 14. Patient: Cold. Like I was going to die. Just like I feel every night. Did it just happen once? 15. Therapist: I don’t know. 16. Patient: I want to let him out. Do you remember when I told you I wanted to be a woman because I wanted to give birth? Well, I want to give birth to the little boy. How do I start the gestation? 17. Therapist: I think the gestation has been there a long time already. The little boy has been gestating for years. 18. Patient: Like an elephant.



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

19. Therapist: A long and very heavy gestation. 20. Patient: How does he get born though? 21. Therapist: Through labour. What you’re doing now is labour. Painful and long, but in the end the child is born. 22. Patient: How long is labour? 23. Therapist: In people, it varies alot. But what about elephants? The gestation is long, maybe the labour is long too. 24. Patient: This won’t be done tomorrow. 25. Therapist: Probably not, but you’ve come a distance already. 26. Patient: I want it over. I want to give birth already.

The patient began by relating in an incoherent manner his physical pains and his memory of being molested (Lines 1–14).5 By uttering “I can’t get out” (Line 4), it might appear that he has reverted to the conceptualisation of being contained, instead of being an agentive container. However, he could well have been literally referring to his recalled childhood experience of being locked and molested in a bathroom (Line 6). The pitfall of ascribing metaphoricity to statements intended as literal is well known in metaphor research (e.g. Cameron, 1999a; Geeraerts & Grondelaers, 1995), and in the context of psychotherapy it may well require a good understanding of the patient’s life experiences, which may not be mentioned in the immediate interaction, in order to distinguish the literal from the metaphorical. Nevertheless, the patient returns to the previously established body-as-container conceptualisation in Line 16, but now speaks of wanting to “give birth” to the boy. Compared to Session 3, when he was still hesitant to “let the boy out”, he now confidently declares that he “wants to give birth (already)” (Line 1, 11). This shift in attitude is reflected in the substantive differences between a castle and a pregnant woman. While both instantiate the container schema, a pregnant woman is an exemplar of physical containment which, in the American cultural context in which the therapy occurred, implies positive values such as responsibility and a sense of ownership over the contained (i.e. the foetus). The ability to conceive is also highly esteemed from the patient’s individual perspective, as he speaks of wanting “to be a woman because (he) wanted to give birth” (Line 1). The process of letting the boy out and finally attaining the solution of exteriority is thus reconceptualised as a natural biological process of gestation, this time connoted with only positive sentiments. The pregnancy metaphor also marks an end to the creative deployment and evolution of metaphors we have witnessed over the past four sessions. It might be relevant to know that the patient eventually recovered strongly and was able to lead a happier and healthier life (Kopp, 1995: 90).

5. Refer to Fine (2008) for a discussion of verbal incoherence as an aspect of psychopathology.

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In summary, we have observed how the collaborative evolution of the metaphoric scenario occurred alongside the therapeutic goal of instilling in the patient a sense of optimism and agency with respect to his problems. The therapist was able to guide the elaboration of the container schema with progressively available ideational resources to conceptualise the complex target of the patient’s psychological state. Intimate discussion of the patient’s personal life took place not only as an inherent feature of psychotherapy, but as a means of uncovering conceptual materials which were drawn upon to construct a metaphoric scenario, in which the patient’s construal of containment gradually shifted from being passively contained, to actively containing. Despite its seemingly chimerical nature, the scenario did not develop in haphazard and unsystematic fashion. An overview of the four sessions shows that underlying the progressive incorporation of new conceptual materials is an inferential consistency structured around an image schematic understanding of exteriority, interiority and boundaries. This consistency facilitated the emergence of a stable problem-solution framework which is naturalistic by virtue of its ostensibly embodied roots, and vividly elaborated by elements of cultural and individualspecific knowledge. Table 1 summarises the specific instantiations of these levels of metaphor across the four sessions, while Figure 1 captures their interaction and functional complementarity with respect to the therapeutic objective at hand.

Embodied knowledge (CONTAINER image schema) • Provides coherent problemsolution framework

Session 1

Session 2/3

Session 3

Session 4

INTERIOR

Patient

• Discussion of dream, painting, childhood.

“Blended boy”

Fetus

EXTERIOR

“Outside world”

Death stalking

“Outside world”

Castle walls Patient as castle

Patient as pregnant woman

Fear of exterior, isolation, helplessness vulnerability

Agency, sense of responsibility, ownership

Patient as a castle

Patient as a pregnant woman

BOUNDARY

Giant wall

Subjective attitudes towards CONTAINMENT

Frustration, isolation, helplessness

Patient’s self conceptualisation

Patient as himself

• Pool of entities made available: Sara, castle, Death, little boy

Cultural and individual-specific knowledge • Reveals significant events in patient’s life • Exemplifiers subjective attitudes towards containment • Collaboratively drawn upon to construct metaphors Key therapeutic objective: to “re-establish an agentic position” (Drewery & McKenzie 1999:137) with regard to the patient’s problems Progression reflected in: evolving subjective towards containment, expressed through metaphors which draw upon embodied, cultural and autobiographic knowledge

Figure 1.  Interaction of ideational resources across four psychotherapy sessions



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

It is an open, empirical question whether the creative interaction between embodied, cultural, and individual knowledge observed in the present case study can be observed in other therapist-patient pairs, or other therapeutic orientations. An important prerequisite is surely a willingness on the part of both participants to engage in such creative expression, which seems to border on explicit language play (Haley, 1973). How successful such an approach turns out to be would likely depend, among other factors, on the expressive styles of different individuals. As emphasised in Chapter 2, I will have little to say about the actual therapeutic efficacy of metaphors, and will in no way claim that the use of metaphors has a direct, causal effect on patient improvement. What this analysis positively reveals, however, is that there is much room to go beyond theoretical quarrels over the constitution Table 1.  Levels of metaphor and specific instantiations across the sessions Level of metaphor

Instantiations

Embodied (image-schematic logic)

container image schema Session 1 – giant wall around patient; putting a door in the wall Session 3 – little boy behind thick walls of castle; Death stalking outside – adult patient as castle; little boy locked up in adult patient Session 4 – adult patient as pregnant woman; little boy as fetus

Cultural (general socio-cultural knowledge and connotations)

Session 1 – general knowledge of walls Session 2 – light as source of hope; physical freedom and growth as emotional freedom and growth; general knowledge of skull of Death and castles Session 3 – general knowledge of skull of Death and castles, interaction between adult patient and little boy, light as source of hope Session 4 – general knowledge of pregnancy and its values

Individual specific (idiosyncratic experiences)

Session 1 – patient’s sense of emotional isolation Session 2 – painting of Sara, patient’s dream, patient’ emotional state Session 3 – blend of patient’s childhood experiences and adult self Session 4 – patient “wanting to be a woman”

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of metaphors, primary of which seems to be the issue of whether conceptual relationships between sources and targets are motivated more by our embodiment, or by cultural and personal understandings. The present approach eschews such “bean-counting” (Wee, 2006: 121), and instead considers the complementary functions performed by different types of source concepts in psychotherapeutic talk. We can now revisit the questions posed at the beginning of this chapter with some answers. Firstly, with regard to the type(s) of stabilities which emerge, and their relation to the unfolding therapeutic work, we have seen how the relatively invariant inferential logic of the container image schema constitutes an emergent stability in the metaphoric discourse – one which can be developed to build a therapeutic problem-solution framework grounded upon the concepts of exteriority, interiority, and boundaries. Secondly, by showing how this underlying image schematic knowledge is complemented by source concepts of particular salience and significance to the patient, I have argued the case that different types of ideational resources contribute in different ways to the prescriptive aim at hand. I now turn to the second half of this chapter, which adopts a more speculative tone in suggesting how knowledge of the complementarity between different ideational resources can contribute to the enhancement of existing therapeutic protocols of metaphor use. 3.4 The prescriptive aim: Applying knowledge of complementarity 3.4.1 The biopsychosocial model of metaphor therapy Our present concern with describing the embodied, cultural, and individual dimensions of metaphors finds its psychotherapeutic counterpart in the work of Marwan Dwairy, who challenges the applicability of Western therapeutic methods to non-Western patients (Dwairy, 1997, 1999, 2009; Dwairy & Van Sickle, 1996). Dwairy and his associates claim that traditional Western dualistic philosophy, reinforced by the historical emergence of individualistic ideals, has produced psychotherapeutic theories which focus on the psychological self as the locus of mental conditions (e.g. McAdams, 2009). Non-western societies, on the other hand, have long regarded somatic and socio-cultural factors as equally foundational to mental disorders (cf. Marsella, DeVos, & Hsu, 1985; Marsella & White, 1982). Applying Western methods to non-Western patients who have been documented to report more somatic sensations during psychotherapy might therefore be ineffective or even harmful. Quoting the success of similar approaches (e.g. Donovan, 1988; Gross, 1981; Zucker & Gomberg, 1986), Dwairy (1997: 721) advocates a biopsychosocial framework which “integrates biological, psychological and social factors



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

in explaining people’s disorders”, and suggests that imaginative and metaphoric language provides an interface on which these factors interact. With regard to the therapeutic efficacy of metaphors, it is further claimed that “therapeutic interventions at the imaginative level can create changes within… the biological, psychological, and socio-cultural systems” (Dwairy, 1997: 726). Dwairy explains the relationship between the three ‘systems’ as such. Symptoms of disorders possess neurobiological, psychological and socio-cultural roots, each of which can in turn be associated with metaphor. Biologically, “manipulation within the imaginative realm (i.e. metaphor) may affect body functioning”, because our bodies tend to react to images as if they were real (Dwairy, 1997: 725). Psychologically, metaphor and other symbolic activities such as fantasies, dreams, and creative work provide access routes to hidden memories and experiences, as famously expounded in the Freudian tradition. Socio-culturally, metaphors are deemed to provide insights into culture-specific ways of conceptualising mental ill-being (cf. Alverson et al., 2007). Patient metaphors thus offer a glimpse into the three interconnected systems, while therapists’ intervention or management of these metaphors can effect necessary changes to the systems. Despite ostensibly sharing the belief that body, mind and culture can manifest their interaction through metaphor, it is apparent that some of Dwairy’s basic theoretical assumptions differ from those held by most contemporary metaphor scholars, whether of a cognitivist or anthropological persuasion. Firstly, he draws an unqualified distinction between Western and non-Western languages (e.g. Arabic), asserting that the latter is inherently more metaphoric (Dwairy, 1997: 726; 2009: 201), which makes non-Western therapeutic talk more metaphoric as a result. His proposed emphasis on the cultural dimension is thus partly led by a belief in differing linguistic potentials for metaphoricity, which contradicts basic cognitivist assumptions and requires far more extensive linguistic or anthropological evidence than what was provided. Moreover, since non-Western languages are supposedly more metaphorical, Dwairy seems to be making the self-defeating implication that his model is more applicable to those languages and cultures. Secondly, his theory about the relationship between metaphor and the neurobiological system focuses on how imagination can influence various aspect of bodily functioning, while most cognitivists move in the opposite direction and explore how bodily image schemas shape conceptual metaphors. Although there is increasing attention within metaphor theory and physiology on how metaphors can ‘retroject’ or ‘feedback’ into bodily experience (Gibbs, 2005; Kimmel, 2005, 2008; Santarpia et al., 2009), much of what we know about metaphors has been built upon the projection from bodily experience to conceptual structure, and Dwairy does not seem to have taken this into consideration.

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Notwithstanding these misalignments and conflicting theoretical assumptions, Dwairy’s theorisation of how the bodily and cultural dimensions interrelate is a welcome contribution to psychotherapeutic work on metaphor. Dwairy further recommends Kopp and Craw’s (1998) 7-step interview protocol as an example of how his theoretical ideas could be concretised as a clinical technique. I turn now to the details of this protocol, which outlines how therapists can help patients explore their metaphors, and suggest how it can be enhanced by a greater awareness of the complementarity between the different ideational bases of embodied, cultural, and individual knowledge. 3.4.2 The 7-step interview protocol Building on Kopp (1995), which argued for the therapeutic efficacy of developing patients’ metaphors, Kopp and Craw outlined seven concrete steps to be taken by a therapist when guiding patients to “explore and ultimately transform their own metaphorical language and imagery” (Kopp & Craw, 1998: 306). One of their main assumptions is that therapeutic practice in general, and the use of metaphor in particular, should be more affirmative of the validity and utility of patients’ conceptualisations. This view contrasts with the more therapist-centric orientation in which therapists tend to prescribe what they deem to be helpful, without necessarily paying attention to patients’ points of view (Erickson & Rossi, 1976/80; Goncalves & Craine, 1990; Lankton & Lankton, 1983). Despite their patient-centric emphasis on interpretation rather than prescription, Kopp and Craw, as well as others who have espoused similar views (e.g. Bettelheim, 1977; Sharpe, 1950; Siegelman, 1990), would nonetheless agree that therapists still need to provide active (but non-coercive) guidance in organising patients’ input and relating them to the therapeutic issues at hand. I reproduce Kopp and Craw’s protocol in Table 2 below, and suggest how therapists can provide such guidance during the collaborative construction of metaphors, once they don the metaphor researcher’s hat and discern the functional complementarity between the embodied, cultural, and individual dimensions of metaphors. Kopp and Craw encourage therapists to be attentive towards any utterance which suggests a potential metaphoric construal of the prevailing issue(s) (Step 1). Patients are then required to describe as vividly as possible an “image or picture” associated with the utterance (Step 2), which is likely to prompt a description of concrete, substantive entities with some measure of cultural or personal significance, even though the original utterance might have been prosaic, conventional, or possibly without figurative intention (cf. Section 4.6.1). One example might be the initial wall metaphor encountered in our case study. Other examples provided by Kopp and Craw (1998: 308–309) include a man describing a “dark cloud



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

Table 2.  7-step structured interview protocol (Kopp & Craw, 1998) Step 1 Notice metaphors Step 2 “When you say [the metaphor] what image or picture comes to mind?” or “What image or picture do you see in your mind’s eye?” or “What does the [metaphor] look like?” Step 3 Explore the metaphor as a sensory image: – setting (e.g. “What else do you see?” or “Describe the scene or an aspect of the scene [associated with the metaphoric image]”) –  action/interaction (e.g. “What else is going on in [the metaphoric image])?” or “What are the other people [in the metaphoric image] saying/thinking/doing?”) – time (e.g. “What led up to this?”; “What was happening [just] before [the situation in the metaphor]?”; “What happens next?”) Step 4 “What is it like to be [the metaphoric image]?” or “What is your experience of [the metaphoric image]?” or “What are you feeling as you [the metaphoric image]?” Step 5 “If you could change the image in any way, how would you change it?” Step 6 “What connections (parallels) do you see between your image of [the metaphoric image] and [the original situation]?” Step 7 “How might the way you changed the image apply to your current situation?”

hanging over me that will rain AIDS down”, and a woman speaking of “being in an ocean seeing waves coming toward me”. Kopp (1995) also recounted a patient who uttered and subsequently developed the conventional idiom “opening up a can of worms” as a novel scenario in which worms escaping from the can flooded his house, arousing feelings of hopelessness and frustration. The apparent emphasis on concrete, substantive details carries over to Step 3, where patients are encouraged to further develop their novel scenario by “exploring the metaphor as a sensory image”. At this stage, elaborative entities (“what else do you see”, “what are other people doing” etc.), as well as scenic and temporal details (“describe the scene”, “what happens next” etc.), are freely added to the metaphoric scenario. Kopp and Craw’s intention is to expand the initial metaphoric image by invoking relevant entities and events, all of which could potentially be mapped back onto pre-existing or previously not thought of target issue(s) at a later stage. For example, the woman in the ocean introduced a metaphorical boat, eventually

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mapped onto some previously undiscovered resource, with which she could overcome the metaphorical waves depicting her troubled job situation. Precisely because Step 6 later on calls for patients to ‘seek connections/parallels’ between their image and real life situation by mapping elements from source to target, it would be helpful for therapists at this point to not just focus on proliferating substantive entities, but to also highlight the structural/logical relations that hold between the entities that occupy the creatively expanding metaphorical scenario (cf. Wee, 2005b). An awareness of these structural/logical relations bears the following three advantages: (1) it should help patients compose a fuller, more coherent metaphoric image as the links between existing and prospective entities are made clear; (2) it provides an underlying consistency which could thread through several sessions as patient metaphors evolve, like in our case study; and (3) it guides the subsequent process of mapping from source back to target6. These should prove particularly helpful for patients (as well as therapists) who might either be less ‘creative’ than required, or overly creative and unconstrained when using metaphors. Image schematic (i.e. embodied) knowledge, as we have seen, exemplifies structural relations of this sort. Foundational concepts like interior, exterior and boundary, or source, path and goal are ideationally robust in that they help trigger the introduction of new entities and events into the metaphoric scenario. Therapists within the cognitive behavioural paradigm (CBT) have observed that patients with “distorted” thoughts and perceptions nevertheless “maintain a highly robust grip upon most of their fundamental conceptual world, including the nature of up and down…” (Stott et al., 2010: 5). This observation, if correct, further suggests the utility of capitalising upon patients’ image schematic knowledge. Additionally, if we indeed share various kinds of image schematic knowledge by virtue of our embodiment, therapists should be able to naturalistically incorporate their use into existing protocols, without having to learn anything ‘new’ (except to practice discerning the relevant image schemas). One way of incorporating their use is to complement Step 3 questions with what I referred to in Section 3.3.4 as image schematic cues, which exploit image schematic understanding in order to coherently organise, or further elicit substantive, culturally-grounded details that might otherwise be difficult to elicit.

Step 3: A suggested list of image schematic cues Table 3 shows a selective list of image schemas (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987) which are likely to be of relevance in psychotherapy, examples of metaphoric images produced at Step 2 which instantiate them, and a suggested list of image schematic 6. I examine this in greater detail in Chapter 4, where I discuss different ways of mapping source onto target as a function of the prevailing prescriptive aim(s).



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

Table 3.  Image schemas, example metaphors and image schematic cues1 Image schema

Metaphoric image

Image schematic cues

container – interior, exterior, boundary

Patient describes himself as “sealed off in castle” (see ­Section 3.3.4)

What else is inside? What is outside? What are castle walls made of?

source-path-goal – start and endpoints, path, direction

Patient feels little progress in therapy. Feels he has reached “an impasse with no destination in sight” (see ­Section 6.2.4)

What does the ideal goal look like? Which direction are you heading towards?

force (blockage, balance, attraction, enablement etc.) – elements of causal interaction (e.g. source, target, direction, intensity)

Patient feels she has “blocked everything” and needs to push at things to get in deeper” (see Section 5.3.1)

What can help you with pulling/pushing? How can you find the balancing point? Can you move the balancing point?

centre-periphery – entity, centre, periphery

Patient feels that her place as the “centre of attraction” in the family has been replaced by her younger siblings (­invented example)

Patient feels unable to balance between various ­commitments in life

As you stand at the centre/ periphery and look out/ inwards, what/whom do you see?

Patient feels he is trapped in cycle a “vicious little circle”, like – start, progression, return to initial state a cat chasing its own tail (see ­Section 5.3.4)

Can you change your start point? Can you change your direction so that you don’t return to the same point?

part-whole – whole, parts, configuration

Can you configure the pieces in a different way?

Patient feels that she has been “shaken up”, and has yet to “put all the pieces back together”22

22. Had a fuller transcript been available, a more detailed analysis of this example (from McMullen & Conway, 1996) might have revealed another aspect of how embodied and cultural knowledge interact. The patient’s metaphor of “putting the pieces back together” can firstly be analysed in terms of the part-whole schema. However, her projection of this schema onto the target concept of “self ”, implying that an “integrated self ” is more ideal than a “fragmented” one, has been suggested to typify people in Western cultures (Geertz, 1975). It would be interesting to see whether the therapist would capitalise on the image schematic framework for inferential consistency, thereby implicitly validating the cultural legitimacy of such a self-construal, or attempt to introduce a different construal of self – one that might in turn require different image schemas.

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cues that could be used at Step 3 alongside Kopp and Craw’s questions. To illustrate their potential applicability across patients with different elaborative styles and/or capacities, I provide examples of metaphors that range in novelty and detail. Many of these examples are taken from transcripts analysed elsewhere in the book, and were not actually deployed as responses to Kopp and Craw’s protocol. They are nonetheless real patient metaphors which could have been plausible responses at Step 2 of the protocol. Where actual examples are unavailable for certain schemas, I have taken the liberty to invent them. Abstracting away from these specific examples, therapists could replace the entities mentioned in the cues, or modify their phrasing where appropriate. It should also be pointed out that image schemas may instantiate in combination (e.g. path and container, as in I am walking into depression; path and cycle, as in I am running around in circles), which would require therapists to flexibly combine different sets of image schematic cues. If used appropriately in conjunction with the existing Step 3 questions, these cues should facilitate the process of metaphoric conceptualisation, resulting in an enriched, coherent and more inferentially robust image. It is hoped that some of these ideas will be tested by psychotherapists. Furthermore, an interesting prospect would be to investigate the differential frequency of occurrence of image schemas across a sizeable corpus of psychotherapeutic transcripts, and their possible correlations with diagnosed conditions, so that therapists can better prepare for the types of metaphors they are likely to encounter. For example, based on the experiential salience of themes such as space and enclosure in agoraphobia, one might reasonably suspect that the container schema would frequently underlie the otherwise potentially diverse and open-ended metaphoric conceptualisations in the discourse of agoraphobics.

Steps 4, 5 and beyond: Evaluation and change of metaphoric images Step 4 elicits patients’ evaluations of their own metaphoric images, in anticipation of Step 5 which invites them to change their image if they think it is non-ideal in some way. I would again suggest that the quality of these steps can be enhanced by paying close attention to the interplay between embodied and cultural knowledge. In Step 4, for example, patients may base their evaluation purely upon cultural knowledge of the desirability of certain source domain entities while preserving the same image schema (e.g. transforming a “basket of whips” on a patient’s back into a “basket of teddy bears” [Kopp, 1995: 10]), upon the desirability of one image schematic state over another (e.g. exteriority over interiority, or vice versa), or upon the desirability of one image schema over another (e.g. travelling on a straight path rather than cyclically, or vice versa; see Cienki, 1999). To reiterate the spirit of this chapter, the point is not to decide whether cultural knowledge or image-schemas are more foundational, but to be aware of how both are relevant in structuring



Chapter 3.  The ideational resources of metaphors

patient conceptualisations, so that both aspects can be explored for possible therapeutic change. With specific regard to Steps 4 and 5, therapists should appreciate that both cultural and image schematic aspects of a metaphor are amenable to normative evaluation. Hence, rather than invariantly asking “if you could change the image in any way” in Step 5, therapists can fine tune their elicitation based on patients’ responses in Step 4, and if possible, guide them in further exploration of aspects of their own metaphors which might have been overlooked or ignored. Steps 6 and 7, the final parts of the protocol, require patients to exercise their metaphor mapping abilities such that the engineered metaphoric image can finally be compared against their real life situation. These steps will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4, which explores the architecture of the links between source and target domains. I have suggested in this section that the complementarity between the different motivating dimensions of metaphors can be fruitfully applied to psychotherapeutic practice, using Kopp and Craw’s 7-step interview protocol as an example. In place of the fairly passive role Kopp and Craw envision for therapists in the elicitation of patient metaphors, my recommendation is for therapists using the protocol to exercise greater perceptiveness and flexibility, particularly from Steps 3 to 5, based on a keener awareness of the aforementioned complementarity. 3.5 Summary This chapter has focused on the ideational content of metaphors deployed in psychotherapeutic talk. Consistent with McMullen’s (1996) observation that psychotherapy is a context in which unique conceptualisation needs necessitate the use of figurative language, the case study in the first half of the chapter demonstrated how metaphors collaboratively and deliberately developed by a therapist-patient pair draw upon multiple ideational resources at the levels of embodiment, cultural, and individual conceptual fields. By showing how the invariant image schematic logic of containment provides a stable problem-solution framework underlying an exploration of various source concepts of cultural and personal significance, I have further demonstrated the utility of an analytic approach which is less concerned with questions regarding the ultimate grounding of metaphors, than with questions regarding the functions that different ideational resources play in purposive discourse contexts (cf. Steen, 1994). In the present case, the evolution of the metaphoric scenario was shown to parallel the therapeutic goal of instilling in the patient a sense of agency and control over his problems. I then moved on to the prescriptive aim, where the task is to suggest how a deeper theoretical understanding of metaphor can translate into practical

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enhancements for therapeutic procedures. We saw through Dwairy’s work that although an awareness of the biological and cultural dimensions of metaphor exists in the province of psychotherapy, formulated clinical procedures such as Kopp and Craw’s interview protocol do not seem to have transformed this into practical terms. In view of this, I made several recommendations on how Kopp and Craw’s protocol can be enhanced, mainly through a heightened sensitivity on therapists’ part towards the embodied, cultural, and individual dimensions of metaphors (e.g. via the use of image schematic cues). My recommendations could be tested with minimal effort, in that therapists need not acquire a whole new set of skills if we indeed already possess a common inventory of embodied knowledge. This is all the more advantageous if image schematic cues help to organise and elicit substantive details, to be mapped at later stages onto the target domain of the patient’s real life situation(s), which might otherwise have been difficult to elicit non-metaphorically. One particularly interesting prospect for future research is to investigate whether the frequency of using certain image schemas correlates with specific diagnosed conditions, as might be the case for agoraphobia.

chapter 4

Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors* 4.1 Introduction This chapter examines the rhetorical development of metaphors in psychotherapeutic talk with reference to Wee’s (2005a) framework of recasting metaphor processing models as discourse strategies, or metaphor types. In Section 2.4, I suggested that it would be useful to interrogate the framework by examining if, and how metaphor types operate in psychotherapeutic interaction, where shifting discourse objectives imply that there are less likely to be straightforward correspondences between a particular metaphor type and a particular objective. I begin by offering a disclaimer to preface the upcoming analysis. Despite the parallels between metaphor types and metaphor processing models which are of present interest, one has to bear in mind the fundamental distinction between the structural features of metaphors in discourse, and the mental representations underlying them. So as to avoid the perception that processing models are being simplistically imposed upon, or conflated with discourse data in the analysis, I propose and subsequently apply alternatives to Wee’s labels of ‘correspondence’ and ‘class inclusion’ for metaphor types. I then move on to the descriptive aim, starting with a brief review of how metaphors are differently elaborated to perform ‘conceptual explication’ and ‘principle highlighting’. While it is clear that these generic discourse objectives do not exhaust the range of objectives in psychotherapeutic talk, and certainly not the range of uses of metaphor in discourse, I show how they nonetheless play important roles in psychotherapy. After demonstrating the relative predominance of a certain metaphor type in these examples, as would have been predicted by Wee’s framework, I proceed to therapeutic situations which involve shifting discourse objectives and circumstances, and examine how these bear upon the spontaneous construction of source-target relations. My analysis of these examples is intended, on the one hand, to illustrate the analytic import of the notion of metaphor types, and on the other hand, to also interrogate some of * Some parts of this chapter have been published in the articles Revisiting metaphor types as discourse strategies: The case of psychotherapeutic discourse in Text and Talk (Tay, 2010) and Applying the notion of metaphor types to enhance counseling protocols in Journal of Counseling and Development ().

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its assumptions about the nature of metaphors in discourse. I then proceed to the second, prescriptive half of the chapter, where I consider how a working knowledge of metaphor types could help therapists enhance the therapeutic value of their own metaphor use, as well as that of their patients. I show how existing frameworks aimed at eliciting and developing patient-generated metaphors (Kopp & Craw, 1998; Sims, 2003; Sims & Whynot, 1997) can be enhanced by regarding metaphor types as different ways to connect source domains elaborated by the patient, with relevant target domains discerned by the therapist. 4.2 Metaphor types as a discourse derivative I remarked earlier that the perception of a connection between the properties of metaphor processing models and the structural features of metaphors in discourse represents a healthy exploration of overlaps between different areas of metaphor research. However, the pursuit of methodological pluralism in metaphor research needs to be grounded upon careful recognition of fundamental contrasts such as the nature of metaphor in language versus thought, or metaphor as symbolic structure versus psychological process (Steen, 2007, 2011a, 2011b). In our case, the notion of metaphor types as outlined by Wee illustrates how certain characteristics of metaphor as psychological process resemble characteristics of metaphor as symbolic structure (i.e. elaborated metaphors in discourse). Notwithstanding the analytic usefulness of this observation, it is important to emphasise the distinction between the behavioural analysis of metaphor processing in psycholinguistic research, and the structural and functional analysis of metaphor elaboration in the present discourse analytic work. Particularly, just because there happens to be a handful of influential processing models which have inspired a corresponding number of metaphor types, it would be erroneous to assume that these are the only ways to strategically elaborate metaphors, or even more dangerously, that metaphors are developed by speakers only to meet the objectives associated with the metaphor types. It is upon this caveat that I suggest that the existing use of ‘correspondence’ and ‘class inclusion’ as labels for both metaphor processing and metaphor types increases the risk of blurring the line between the two. In order to continue signalling their relation while recognizing the fundamental gap between them, I propose to re-label metaphor types in a way which highlights their status as discourse derivatives of processing mechanisms. The correspondence metaphor type will thus be re-labelled as the alignment metaphor type, while the class inclusion metaphor type will be re-labelled as the category metaphor type. The two sets of labels will now also allow for unambiguous reference to either a processing mechanism, or a discourse construct.



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

4.3 The alignment metaphor type for ‘conceptual explication’ Recall that, notwithstanding differences over such concerns as the ontological status and contents of metaphoric mappings (Section 2.4.1), most correspondence theorists agree upon two principal features of metaphors. These are the existence of systematic correspondences which link entities, attributes, and relations across knowledge structures, and the isomorphism between these structures. Metaphor processing is a matter of searching for and activating “mappable relations” (Gentner, 1983: 164), and the extent to which this is successful largely determines the aptness of the metaphor in question. Applied analogously to metaphor production, the correspondence model describes situations where discourse producers align the source and target concepts as variously and closely as possible – hence the label ‘alignment metaphor type’. The features of the alignment metaphor type facilitate the discourse objective of ‘conceptual explication’, which, as we shall see, play an important role in psychotherapy. Some ways to apply or identify this metaphor type at work include explicit signals not only of a juxtaposition of source and target, but also of the entities, attributes, and/or relations that are being mapped. This of course does not imply that conceptual explication requires, or is necessarily enhanced by metaphor. Exponents and critics have been equally vocal about the potential of metaphors to facilitate learning (Gentner & Gentner, 1983; Tabor-Morris, Froriep, Briles, & McGuire, 2009), or to mislead learners (Jacquette, 2002; Mirowski, 1989). The point is rather that, should discourse producers choose to use metaphors to explicate a target domain, it would be strategic to do so by precisely elucidating the source-target relations at hand. While the alignment metaphor type facilitates conceptual explication, the choice of the source domain itself often depends on other factors. We saw in Chapter 3 how knowledge derived from the unique experience of individuals is suitable for constructing metaphors for therapeutic purposes. Generally speaking, for the pedagogical and ‘ideologically neutral’ purpose of imparting target concepts, source domain(s) are likely to be chosen based on how faithfully and coherently their internal structures mirror those of the target. In cases where suitable sources are not already available, they may furthermore be constructed to serve that purpose (Wee, 2005b). If on the other hand the purpose is to persuade others to accept new and/or controversial concepts, producers may emphasise different criteria such as the inherent interest and legitimacy of the source domain(s) (Boyd, 1993; Kellert, 2008), in the hope that these qualities may also be perceived as being transferred to the target. The following example, from The God Delusion by popular science writer Richard Dawkins (2006), is illustrative of both the pedagogical and persuasive

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aspects of metaphor deployment.1 Dawkins wanted to argue that the endurance of religious ideas can be explained naturalistically, without the need to imagine any supernatural being behind the scene. He coins the concept of a ‘meme’, a “unit of cultural inheritance” (2006: 222) which, analogous to a biological gene, is transmitted down the generations as a result of either natural selection or random mutation. In these extracts he explicates the broad analogous relations between the cultural transmission of (religious) ideas and the biological transmission of genes. Extract A An anthropological survey of Fraser’s Golden Bough impresses us with the diversity of irrational human beliefs. Once entrenched in a culture they persist, evolve and diverge, in a manner reminiscent of biological evolution… It is tempting to pursue the biological analogy to the point of wondering whether something corresponding to natural selection is at work. Are some ideas more spreadable than others, because of intrinsic appeal or merit, or compatibility with existing psychological dispositions, and could this account for the nature and properties of actual religions as we see them, in something like the way we use natural selection to account for living organisms? It is important to understand that ‘merit’ here means only ability to survive and spread. It doesn’t mean deserving of a positive value judgement – something of which we might be humanly proud. Even on an evolutionary model, there doesn’t have to be any natural selection. Biologists acknowledge that a gene may be spread through a population not because it is a good gene but simply because it is a lucky one. We call this genetic drift… The cultural equivalent of genetic drift is a persuasive option, one that we cannot neglect when thinking about the evolution of religion. (2006: 219–220) Extract B In its most general form, natural selection must choose between alternative replicators. A replicator is a piece of coded information that makes exact copies of itself, along with occasional inexact copies or ‘mutations’… The archetypal replicator is a gene, a stretch of DNA that is duplicated, nearly always with extreme accuracy, through an indefinite number of generations. The central question from meme theory is whether there are units of cultural imitation which behave as true replicators, like genes. I am not saying that memes necessarily are close analogues of genes, only that the more like genes they are, the better will meme theory work…  (2006: 222–223)

1. See Chapter 4 of Semino (2008) for more examples of the correspondence model at work in scientific discourse, both popular and technical (though the examples are analysed for different purposes there).



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

Conceivably, Dawkin’s choice of evolutionary genetics as the source domain is motivated both by its legitimacy as an established scientific field, as well as the robust inferential possibilities it provides. For pedagogical purposes it is necessary for Dawkins to delve into the specifics of gene theory, and explicate how its entities, attributes and/or relations provide a plausible model for conceptualising his idea of ‘cultural genetics’. Hence biological genes, as self-replicating entities, are mapped onto the reified construct of self-replicating cultural ‘memes’ (Extract B), while the genetic environment is mapped onto the cultural arena of transmission (Extract A). The crucial attribute of genetic ‘merit’ as denoting survivability instead of goodness is mapped onto the hypothesised attribute of memes. Lastly, the processes of natural selection and genetic drift which involve complex relations between genes and their environments are mapped onto the hypothesised processes of cultural evolution (Extracts A and B). Also notice how Dawkins carefully disclaims that memes do not necessarily have to be exactly analogous to genes (Extract B), in order to point out the limits of his analogy, and avoid the danger of having similarity mistaken for categorical equivalence. This underscores an important point of contrast between systematic explication and category highlighting (cf. Wee 2005a: 229). While systematic explication involves a comprehensive listing of cross-domain relations, there is nothing in principle to prevent a thus developed metaphor from being interpreted as highlighting a common category. In many cases this does not cause too much trouble. For example, in John Gribbin’s pinhead-and-cathedral metaphor for atomic structure (cited in Wee 2005a), there is little chance that any reader would misconstrue the author as trying to emphasise a superordinate category subsuming pinheads and atoms. In the present case, however, there might be a greater chance of misconstruing the discourse objective because both source and target refer to ‘theories’ of some sort. Consequently, Dawkin’s intention to elucidate the structure of his nascent meme theory via its parallels with genetic theory might be misunderstood, in that readers may lose sight of the basic ontological dissimilarity between memes and genes, and jump to the conclusion that ‘memetics’ and genetics are (already) legitimately classifiable under a common family of scientific theories. Such examples emphasise the need for caution not only when deciding to use metaphor, but when choosing how to elaborate it rhetorically. More examples of the alignment metaphor type serving the objective of conceptual explication in popular scientific discourse can be found in Wee (2005a). I now turn to examples of psychotherapeutic talk, where conceptual explication is carried out not only by therapists in their capacity as mental health experts, but also by patients having to construe and communicate the details of their subjectively experienced conditions. My emphasis will similarly be on how the alignment metaphor type presents itself as a suitable discourse strategy under these circumstances.

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4.3.1 Conceptual explication in psychotherapy Let us first consider an example from a patient. One common situation in which patients find themselves performing some form of conceptual explication is when they attempt to describe symptoms of their afflictions. Although therapists would presumably know about the more ‘objective’ symptoms of different psychological conditions, there is also considerable individual variation in how these are subjectively experienced (Roe & Lachman, 2005). Patients are therefore, in an important sense, experts of their own condition, as they help therapists better understand the subjective aspects of their predicament. In the constructivist therapeutic tradition outlined in Chapter 2 (Guidano, 1995), the argument that only patients themselves can have a truly valid understanding of their own conditions is sometimes advanced. The challenge of verbally communicating complex (and possibly novel) subjective experiences means that patients, who are likely to be unfamiliar with the relevant ‘literal’ medical jargon, might choose to fill this semantic lacuna (Ricoeur, 1976) with metaphors and analogies. The following example from Kopp (1995) is of a patient attempting to describe her experience of bipolar disorder. Individuals suffering from bipolar disorder are known to undergo extreme, cyclical states of elevation and depression, but also revert to a more stable state during which they are able to function normally.2 Our present interest lies not only in the fact that figurative language provides a resource for cogent self-reporting during psychotherapy, but in how the patient’s need to communicate inherently complex target domain phenomena (e.g. subjective experience of both elevated and depressed states, and how they are related) leads to the development of metaphoric discourse along the lines of the alignment metaphor type. 1. Patient: Bipolar illness is like being a balloon. Sometimes the balloon is full of air that it is about to burst, and sometimes there’s no air in the balloon at all, it’s limp and not pretty. 2. Therapist: What does it feel like to be the balloon? 3. Patient: It’s scary because when I wake up in the morning I don’t know if my balloon is going to be inflated or not, and not being stable feels terrible. 4. Therapist: If you could change something about this balloon, how would you change it? Do you even want to change it? 5. Patient: Yes, of course I do. I guess I could tie the knot on the bottom of the balloon tighter, to make sure nothing leaks out. 2. More technical information about bipolar disorder can be found in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition), or the World Health Organisation’s ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th edition).



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

6. Therapist: So then you would be completely stable, with no movement of your thoughts in and out? 7. Patient: Well… I guess that’s not right, I should expect that my moods will be a little different everyday… like normal people, right? 8. Therapist: Do you feel that your thoughts should be able to roam freely in and out of the balloon? 9. Patient: I’d like to have greater control over this process and not just let my thoughts run away with themselves, like they seem to be doing all the time! 10. Therapist: So how could you regulate that flow? 11. Patient: Maybe I could hire a guard to stand at the foot of the balloon and watch to see that the air in the balloon is flowing freely. 12. Therapist: You said you would “hire” a guard? 13. Patient: Well, there’s always a price to pay. 14. Therapist: Can you afford that price? 15. Patient: I can’t afford not to! 16. Therapist: So what will the guard be doing? 17. Patient: I guess she’d stand there and either hold open the end or shut it tight, depending on what was happening. 18. Therapist: So who is this guard anyway? 19. Patient: Um… I don’t know. 20. Therapist: You said “she”. Is it a female? 21. Patient: Well, right now it’s the medication, but I guess when it comes down to it, the ultimate guard is really myself.

The patient maps the two prototypical states of a balloon onto the corresponding states of bipolar disorder (Line 1), and implies in Lines 3 and 5 that preventing the air in the balloon from leaking out corresponds to keeping herself in an emotionally stable state. In order to effectively communicate her predicament, she is not merely interested in highlighting the cyclic nature of bipolar disorder, but is required to convey how both elevated and depressed states feel, and the experience of regulating this unpredictable vacillation. She presents a vivid contrast between a balloon being “full of air” and “about to burst”, and having “no air at all” and “limp and not pretty” (Line 1), suggesting that a corresponding level of contrast exists for her bipolar condition. Through Lines 3 and 5, she also construes the ability to regulate the amount of air in the balloon as the key to gaining control over her condition.3 3. Conceptual blending theorists would remark that the balloon metaphor arises from integrating knowledge of balloons with knowledge of bipolar disorder, since balloons are described here as being filled with erratic levels of air, which is not one of their conventional properties,

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By inviting the patient to “change something about the balloon” (Line 4), the therapist acknowledges the validity of her patient’s metaphor, and encourages her to pursue further metaphoric inferences. She expresses in Line 6 her understanding of the developing metaphoric scenario, by suggesting how a stable balloon would map onto a stable mind (so then you would be completely stable), and movement of air onto the movement of thoughts (with no movement of your thoughts in and out). Notice how Line 6 is prefaced with the discourse marker so (then), which has been observed to indicate an inferential connection, in this case based on metaphor, between the preceding and subsequent utterance (Blakemore, 2002; Schiffrin, 1987). In Chapter 7 I will elaborate on the use of discourse markers to signal such junctures in the unfolding therapeutic talk. The therapist and patient continue to develop their shared understanding of the balloon metaphor in an aligned fashion. From Lines 11 to 21, based on the ideal target domain outcome of attaining control over the patient’s vacillating thoughts, they conjure up a “guard” in the source domain, and begin to explore whether the corresponding target domain entity exists in real life. One might at this point foresee potential objections to such an approach. Similar to the case study in Chapter 3, the extravagant reliance on metaphors might be criticised for being whimsical, childish, or even irrational.4 Blenkiron (2005: 56) for instance cautions that “pushing (metaphoric) comparisons too far” runs the risk of trivialising the patient’s problems. However, from the perspective of our descriptive aim, issues of therapeutic efficacy are not of immediate concern. What is of interest is how the patient’s objective of communicating her condition, and the subsequent understanding and follow-up by the therapist, are facilitated by the characteristics of the alignment metaphor type. In contrast, an emphasis on some derived superordinate category like ‘things that fluctuate’, in accordance with the category emphasis model, would not have been equally conducive. It is in the first place less easy to imagine what superordinate category can be coherently extracted from the fantastical image of the guard and balloon. but likely derived from the nature of bipolar illness instead. The distinction between substantive content and structure (see Section 4.3) should again be made here. Regardless of what motivates the unconventional contents of the source, the structure (or architecture) of this type of “double scope blend” still involves a correspondence strategy (cf. Kövecses, 2005: 278). 4. Here I would like to relate an anecdote about how metaphors can be negatively perceived. At a university I know, new PhD students would be invited to a talk about the ‘PhD journey’. The speaker is fond of presenting a picture of a roller coaster, and painstakingly comparing doctoral studies to a roller coaster ride, institutional support to the pillars beneath the tracks, and so on. I know of people who describe this as “childish” and “unrealistic”. It is quite likely that similar sentiments would arise for some people, in the context of psychotherapy (see Section 8.4.1).



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

Perhaps to an even greater extent, therapists are also faced with the task of conceptual explication, and frequently communicate structurally complex target concepts to their patients. I will reserve an example of this for Section 4.5, when I discuss discourse circumstances which motivate the use of both metaphor types. For now, I turn to the predominant use of the class inclusion strategy to facilitate what might be called the discourse objective of ‘principle highlighting’ in psychotherapy. 4.4 The category metaphor type for ‘principle highlighting’ As opposed to the correspondence model, the class inclusion model posits that metaphor processing involves the construal of both source and target as belonging to a superordinate category, of which the source is a particularly successful exemplar. Applied analogously to metaphor production, it is more strategic or relevant in some discourse situations to emphasise an overarching similarity between source and target rather than to align them exhaustively. The following example, taken from Wee (2005a), shows that the author’s purpose in metaphorically comparing ‘management’ to ‘football coaching’ is not to invite a systematic comparison between the two domains, but to “extract a number of principles (from football coaching) that are claimed also to be applicable to the workplace” (2005a: 231). The author’s wish is to highlight these superordinate management principles (e.g. ‘work hard to play as a team’), of which activities related to football coaching just happen to be particularly relevant or appealing exemplars: Football and business are different, of course, but these days, the challenge for business people is not entirely different from what a coach faces on the football field. The strategy is similar – finding and using the edge that makes a difference require constant attention. In the end, whether it’s sports or business, the difference between winning and losing doesn’t depend on trick plays or using new systems each week. The competition has the same information as you do. So, what are you going to use to win? It’s a matter of motivating people to prepare and work hard to play as a team. In a word, it’s coaching. (Wee 2005a: 230–231)

Another compelling example can be seen in How Life Imitates Chess, authored by chess grandmaster-turned-politician Garry Kasparov (2007), who argues that we can learn many principles of leadership from the game. In the following extract, Kasparov suggests that humans outperform computers at chess (at the time of writing) because of our unique ability to synthesise information. Likewise, he claims, CEOs and army generals can exercise the same ability when leading their charges.

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We know computers calculate better than we do, so where does our success come from? The answer is synthesis, the ability to combine creativity and calculation, art and science, into a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience. This is the way we improve at anything in our lives that involves thinking, which is to say, everything. A CEO must combine analysis and research with creative thinking to lead his company effectively. An army general has to apply his knowledge of human nature to predict and counter the strategies of the enemy. It also helps that we have a common vocabulary to work with. If you overheard a discussion that referred to ‘the opening phase’, ‘sector vulnerability’, ‘strategic planning’, and ‘tactical implementation’, you might assume a corporate takeover was in the offing. But it could equally refer to any weekend chess tournament.  (Kasparov, 2007: 27–28; italics mine)5

As in the previous example, specific points of alignment between chess and business, or the military, are of less relevance than extracting the main principle of synthesis from chess (This is the way we improve at anything in our lives that involves thinking) and applying it to the target domains. The very fact that the different domains of business and military qualify together as suitable targets underlines this emphasis on categories, not alignment. In clear contrast with Richard Dawkin’s rhetorical strategy outlined in Section 4.3, where dissimilarities are carefully pointed out to avoid confusing comparison with categorical equivalence, Kasparov attempts to reduce the dissimilarity between chess and corporate leadership by asserting the common vocabulary between a corporate takeover and any weekend chess tournament. Also telling is the fact that this extract is titled More than Metaphor, which emphasises Kasparov’s discursive construction of a categorical maxim (i.e. the answer is synthesis), under which various activities like chess, corporate, and military leadership find commonality not just in metaphorical ways. We can see that the key features of the category metaphor type render it suitable for highlighting concepts and principles which are abstracted away from the source and target. One genre in which the category metaphor type seems particularly operative is that of fables and parables. Concrete everyday scenarios as sketched in The Boy who Cried Wolf and The Parable of the Sower etc. are often used to metaphorically illustrate abstract ethical and/or religious principles. Readers are often supposed to extract a ‘moral of the story’ which is instantiated by the tale and aimed at the target domain (typically some aspect of proper livelihood). Bearing the discussed examples in mind, we now observe how the category metaphor type facilitates the important task of highlighting principles in psychotherapeutic talk. 5. Reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on ­behalf of Garry Kasparov.



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

4.4.1 Principle highlighting in psychotherapy We have seen how metaphors are used to explicate target concepts which are structurally complex. Besides the objective of understanding the target per se, however, metaphors also serve in psychotherapy the more rhetorical purpose of persuading patients to acknowledge the validity of certain principles. The objective is not so much to attain a comprehensive understanding of the principles themselves, but to illustrate as convincingly as possible their pertinence to the issue(s) that the patient is facing. Thus, where metaphors are used, the source domain is not capitalised upon for its ability to model structural relations in the target, but for the extent to which it is able to manifest the principle(s) in question. The therapist in the following example is dealing with a patient who is anxious about not coping well with his studies. She uses a bomb disposal metaphor to illustrate her opinion that his anxieties are caused by high expectations and pressures, the magnitude of which resembles those faced by bomb disposers. She attempts to convey a general principle relevant to his situation; i.e. too much pressure can affect your performance (Line 3). Notice that neither the principle itself, nor the internal dynamics of the patient’s situation is in any particular need of explication. What matters (at this therapeutic stage) is not an understanding of exactly how pressure affects performance, but ensuring the patient recognises that it does. 1. Therapist: Yeah, I mean [it’s your around] (ph) reading, I think it’s the expectation and the demands that may cause you anxiety. [Unless to say] (ph) like being in that school in Portugal then being sent here, knowing that your company sent you – and what would it look like if you returned back home? Would you be a failure? You know, here you are, you’re [with them] (ph), wanted them for your school – and you have all these other smart folks around you. And you’re not the same star that you were back in your country. And you’re afraid the same thing may happen that happened in Portugal. 2. So with those things in the background, why wouldn’t someone be anxious about an exam or about material or whatever the case is? If you have this huge – you know, it’s kind of like even an example – and we have to begin wrapping up. But like – you know, like a person – the people who have to disbomb bombs? You know – I forget what they call them, but if a building even called, the bomb squad comes in, right? And it’s one person who has to realise – figure out which wires to disconnect. And you see the clock – it’s ticking and it’s down to three seconds or whatever, and you’ve got to figure out which wire to pull.

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3. And they know that if they don’t get the – if they don’t pull the right cord, the whole building – the whole city’s going to be bombed and everything. That’s a lot of pressure, right? And so that can be – if that person had so much anxiety at that point to say, “Uh, I can’t do this.” You know – whereas the bomb trainers – thankfully, they’re not like that, you know? They can think under pressure and put that anxiety aside and not think about all of this stuff when they’re doing that, right? So if you have all this pressure behind you, in the background, when you take a test or you sit down and read something, that can affect your performance as well.

The therapist summarises in Line 1 the circumstances which she believes are giving her patient excessive pressure. The emphasis here is not to construe and explicate possible interrelationships between these circumstances, but to suggest their overall effect on the patient’s well-being. Him being sent by his company and placed in a more competitive environment (all these smart folks around you) are not individual problems with complex interrelationships in need of explication, but are simply cumulative sources of pressure operating in the background (Line 2). The therapist is therefore less concerned with specific episodes and/or issues, than with emphasising that pressure can cause anxiety and reduce performance across a whole range of them – exams, reading materials, or whatever the case is (Line 2). If the patient cannot infer this association between pressure and performance based on his own experiences, the therapist could invite him to relate the latter to some other set of experiences which better manifest the association. In such a case it is neither necessary nor obviously advantageous to ensure that every element and relation in the exemplary source domain would possess a correspondent in the target domain. It would instead be more felicitous to have the source as a particularly striking illustration of the principle in question, so that the patient would not only pay more attention to it, but also think about how its relevance to the source could also be transferred to the target. The task of bomb disposal is clearly a heavy responsibility, with disastrous consequences if not done correctly. It vividly exemplifies intense pressure and its effects on those who succumb to it. Naturally, greater rhetorical effectiveness is attained by maximising the description of the pressure and consequences (And you see the clock – it’s ticking and it’s down to three seconds or whatever, and you’ve got to figure out which wire to pull [Line 2]), even to a hyperbolic extent (the whole city’s going to be bombed and everything [Line 3]), or by any other means which would champion it as a good example. This can be done without the burden of ensuring that a correspondent state of affairs exists in the target activities of the patient. Although the patient is implicitly encouraged to place himself in the bomb disposer’s shoes and relate to the pressures they face, there is in fact no faithful correspondence



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

between the entities, attributes and relations between the two domains. The ticking clock (the patient did not relate any issue with time shortage), the building, the city and the disconnecting of wires, though vividly described, do not have obvious target counterparts. What mediates between the source and target, which at the same time constitutes the point of the discourse and the central therapeutic message, is instead the extracted principle of the relationship between pressure and performance. It should also be noted how the prominence of this principle is rhetorically underscored by its explicit statement at both the beginning and the end of the therapist’s talk (start of Line 2 and end of Line 3). The examples I have discussed so far show how metaphors are developed in different ways to meet the requirements of different important therapeutic objectives. The relative predominance of the alignment metaphor type for conceptual explication, and the category metaphor type for principle highlighting, seems to have paralleled Wee’s analyses of written discourse. It might be possible to generalise that, in cases where the prevailing discourse objectives are fairly stable, be it in popular science texts, management texts, or certain therapeutic situations, we can expect to identify a consistent strategy of metaphor elaboration. However, psychotherapeutic interaction often also involves the intricate negotiation of a range of shifting and transient discourse objectives. Where metaphors are employed to meet these shifting discourse circumstances, we should expect to observe more intricate patterns of metaphor elaboration which involve some form of interaction between different metaphor types (Cameron, 2007b). Taking a minute to revisit the intriguing links between processing models and discourse strategies which inspired the notion of metaphor types in the first place, a further analogous link might be drawn between the career-of-metaphor processing model (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005; Gentner & Bowdle, 2001), and the observation of interacting metaphor types. Just as Gentner and Bowdle theorise that the processing mechanism changes with the gradual conventionalisation of a metaphoric expression, the strategy of elaborating of a metaphor is also subject to change as a result of particular discursive factors, a point which may lend towards a prospective “discourse-analytical version” (Steen, 2011a: 55) of the career-of-metaphor model. 4.5 Shifting discourse circumstances in psychotherapy I now illustrate two examples of shifting discourse circumstances and how they bear upon the strategic development of metaphors. While either the alignment or category metaphor type may predominate in prototypical instances of conceptual explication or principle highlighting, it is sometimes necessary for discourse producers to exploit the features of both. This is evident in the first upcoming

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example, as the therapist begins with a global picture of the patient’s predicament, and subsequently ‘zooms in’ onto one specific aspect. The second example of shifting discourse circumstances coincides with an atypical turn in the therapist-patient relationship, and illustrates how metaphor type features can be discerned even when speakers seem to be avoiding the elaboration of metaphors. 4.5.1 Global-to-specific shift in discourse focus We saw in Section 4.3.1 an example of a patient attempting to describe her experience of bipolar disorder. Therapists likewise face the task of describing structurally complex concepts, such as when explaining the technicalities of their patients’ conditions, how a particular therapy approach works, or providing coherent summaries of what patients relate to them. In the following example, the therapist provides a summary of the multiple issues which have been brought up during therapy, in order to help her patient perceive potential connections between them. The patient is a Portuguese national working in the United States as a research assistant and aiming to become a graduate student there. She has been discussing with her therapist various difficulties that have surfaced as potential impediments to her goals, including her recent breakup, her feelings of loneliness, her mother’s illness and her boss. The therapist offers a metaphoric construal of life as a race,6 and her problems as hurdles to be crossed. 1. Therapist: Okay, so you don’t want to do those things? If you had your sights set on doing grad school here, there is nothing that should be able to stop you from doing that. Right? And sometimes, Marta, when we have a goal or something in front of us and that we want really bad, sometimes obstacles and things present themselves. Have you ever seen hurdles before? Like track races? And they have around the track, they are runners and they jump over these things. 2. Patient: Yeah. 3. Therapist: You know, that’s kind of like what life’s course is like. We have this track that we have to run around. But sometimes there are hurdles that we have to jump over in order to get to the finish line. And where we’re trying. You know, and so you have this goal to (audio gap) 6. The metaphor of life as a race, or some sort of journey, is often put forward as a shining example of the correspondence model (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). On the other hand, alternative analyses of lives and journeys as instantiating the class-inclusion model have also been provided (Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999). Any isolated occurrence of this metaphor therefore seems analysable by either of these models, with arguably equal plausibility. Our present focus, however, requires us to examine discourse objectives as a point of departure, to understand the conditions under which one model is preferred over the other.



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

You have this goal to get this graduate degree. You have this goal to get educated in the States. You have this goal to maybe one day go back to Portugal and teach with this degree and things that you’ve done. And you have these hurdles that keep presenting themselves. You have a situation with your boyfriend and the break up. That could have been a hurdle. You have this crazy, you know, boss and advisor, right? You have, you know, dealing with your mom’s situation. And your family situation and dealing with that loneliness. That’s a hurdle. Right? Sometimes life presents different hurdles that we have to cross, but that doesn’t mean when we fall and not continue to go toward that. Right? You know, just trying to find ways to muster up enough energy to get over these particular hurdles. And what they use in track terminology, they clear the hurdle. Sometimes they even kick them down to go over to the next one. You know it’s like psshhh and then go on to the next one. Psshh and go on to the next one. That’s kind of how you have to look at this stuff. And it’s difficult going through. Because sometimes the hurdles bounce back up and hit the runner. (laughs) You know? You think you’re clearing it, and you’re not really having cleared it. It’s still really – it’s still there. And there are ways to do that. So there’s a way to get over this hurdle, this boss, that we can talk about. So that you don’t have to give up your whole life’s dream, to do it. One thing I was thinking about is that sometimes when you want to communicate concerns that you have with a person, sometimes you begin by saying everything that you like about the person. Or everything you like about the experience before you give them some of the negative things.

The many issues affecting the patient – her breakup, loneliness, mother’s illness and difficult boss – are all individually significant problems which converge to threaten her “whole life’s dream” [3]. Despite their individual significance, the therapist wants to suggest that they are all solvable by summoning some collective determination. She describes each of these problems as individual hurdles in a track race, which depicts their commonality but at the same time respects the important fact that her problems are individually real, and to be handled one at a time; i.e. as particular hurdles [3]. This desired emphasis on the individual realities of her problems is more suitably handled by the alignment metaphor type rather than by category construction. On the one hand, the alignment metaphor type allows the therapist to highlight her problems one at a time, mapping them onto one hurdle after another in a systematic way. On the other hand, it also allows the patient to more clearly visualise the relationship between the individual problems, with reference to the relationship between the individual hurdles (i.e. they come

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quickly one after another). If instead the therapist had focused on category construction, elaborating for instance on how life is a hurdle race because both present many difficulties to be negotiated, it would have been less easy to help the patient come to terms with the impact of individual difficulties. Notice also some linguistic and rhetorical hints in this example which point towards the alignment model. For example, the therapist mentions three specific goals of her patient (getting the graduate degree, getting educated in the States and going back to Portugal to teach [3]), and follows this up with three successive mentions of different hurdles, thus conforming to the isomorphic principle proposed by correspondence theorists (see Section 2.4.1). The therapist’s vivid and iconic description of the process of hurdle clearing (“it’s like psshhh [pʃ] and then go on to the next one. Psshh and go on to the next one”) also suggests an attempt to have the patient visualise and ‘go through’ the sequence of hurdles in an actual track race, and imagine them as individually depicting her problems (cf. N. Wilson & Gibbs, 2007). We have seen how the alignment metaphor type suits the objective thus far of constructing a set of correspondences between problems and hurdles, and emphasising the relationships between problems with reference to the inherent sequential relationship between hurdles. However, the focus of the discourse shifts in the final paragraph of the therapist’s utterance, as she ‘zooms into’ a specific problem in the target domain – the patient’s boss, and how to deal with him. At the global level of her overall predicament, where the objective is to provide a bird’s eye view of her situation and offer a broad conceptualisation of the relationships between her individual problems, it seems effective for the therapist to assert the aforementioned correspondences. But with the zooming in onto a particular ‘hurdle’, the boss, the relevance of these correspondences disappears. A continued application of the alignment metaphor type would have meant one of two things: i. structurally decomposing a single hurdle and attributes of her boss, and mapping the former onto the latter, or ii. switching to a different source domain if i. turns out to be unproductive. It seems indeed rather difficult to imagine useful correspondences between a single hurdle and the boss, with regard to the new objective of providing specific advice on how to deal with him. But if option ii. were taken and a new source concept which offers possible correspondences introduced, the overall coherence of the therapist’s advice might then be jeopardised (see Chapter 5). In the present example, the therapist takes neither option, and chooses instead to stop using metaphors altogether. The question of present interest is if, and how the category metaphor type might have been more suitable, and allowed her to retain the overarching metaphor of life as a hurdle race. That is to say, the boss could still be metaphorically described as a specific hurdle among the other ones, but the point of the metaphor



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

my boss is a hurdle would no longer be to explore structural alignment between source and target, whatever these may be, but to focus on categorical descriptions such as being difficult to deal with, requiring patience and determination, and so on6. It is also possible that, since there is no longer any need to consistently juxtapose source domain elements and target domain elements (i.e. characteristics of the hurdle and characteristics of the boss), the therapist can transit more naturally from these superordinate descriptions, to more concrete and ‘literal’ advice on how to communicate better with the boss. This analysis of a single example does not claim that whenever a speaker embeds a metaphor within a global-to-specific discourse pattern, we can expect to see a clear shift from alignment to category construction (or vice versa). As mentioned in Section 4.2, it would be inaccurate to impose the theoretical boundaries between correspondence and class inclusion, as processing models, onto their discourse derivatives, as metaphor types. The analysis should rather be seen as a demonstration of how the discursive construction of source-target relations both reflect, and are shaped by, the shifting discourse objectives in psychotherapeutic talk. It also serves the more specific purpose of interrogating the notion of metaphor types as originally conceived; i.e. that there is a one to one correspondence between discrete metaphor types and certain types of discrete discourse objectives. Instead, it is quite possible that both are susceptible to shifts, even within a single episode of discourse. I now turn to the second example, which illustrates the use of metaphor to negotiate a transgression of acceptable boundaries in the therapist-patient relationship. 4.5.2 Pragmatic complexities: A case of boundary violation The following exchange took place several minutes after an uncommon and professionally dubious situation in which the male therapist and female patient confessed their sexual attraction towards each other. One of the reasons for which the patient reportedly sought therapy was her frustration with an unfulfilling sexual life. In the extract, the therapist appears to be entertaining the possibility of ‘instructing’ 6. Incidentally, the corpus-based Macmillan English Dictionary and the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary both list ‘difficulty’ or ‘problem’ as one of the senses of hurdle. If the therapist had not initially constructed the vivid metaphoric scenario of a hurdle race, it is likely that an isolated expression such as your boss is a hurdle would have been understood via a class-inclusive process anyway. That is, by describing the boss as a hurdle, the super-ordinate ‘domain-general’ sense (i.e. a difficulty) is likely to be more salient than its ‘domain-specific sense’ (i.e. a physical obstacle) (Gentner & Bowdle, 2001: 228).

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her how to enjoy sexual relations, which he metaphorically describes as a playing lesson in golf. In a playing lesson (which seems more common in America than elsewhere as an instructional technique), learners go beyond the driving range and play through actual games on the golf course with their coaches. It must be strongly emphasised that the therapist’s behaviour in this extract constitutes a clear and unacceptable case of boundary violation (Sarkar, 2004), where the patient’s vulnerability is exploited for the therapist’s personal benefit. While the judicious use and management of metaphors is clearly meant to benefit patients, the therapist’s words here seem to allow for the interpretation that he is using it to gauge the possibility of entering into a sexual relationship with his patient. While they do occur, such transgressions are certainly atypical in professional practice. Mental health professionals around the world are bound by well defined codes of conduct such as The American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code,7 which takes great care in establishing and enforcing ethical principles. Despite its atypicality and unsavoury nature from a therapeutic perspective, the example is nevertheless instructive from a purely discourse analytic perspective in showing how metaphor types can be selected, or not selected, based on their pragmatic acceptability (Low, 2008). It is also valuable for illustrating the delicate interactional scenarios which could arise in therapeutic situations, and the use of metaphor as a strategy to handle these, positively or otherwise. 1. Therapist: …But there’s some – we’re together in some way and it’s warm, it’s tender and all of that. We… and so that’s not a – Some of all or none, we don’t screw tonight and then we’ll never see each other. That’s fine. I think, in order for you to enjoy sexuality, it’s got to be slow, I think. 2. Patient: Yeah, I think you’re right. 3. Therapist: It’s going to have to be tender, and slow, and what you have to do. Strategy. Really get into how you feel and share that with the other person. You get into his feelings. With no pressure – it’s like, maybe we won’t do anything at all. Maybe we’ll just – maybe we’ll just – take – maybe you’ll just take off your blouse, and that’s as far as we go tonight. Maybe that’s enough for tonight. Maybe that’s as far and safe as I’ll feel comfortable so that I don’t turn off. It doesn’t have to be ‘zap’. Boy I wish I could coax the doctors and do this with you. 4. Patient: (laughs) hard. (laughs) 5. Therapist: I mean, it’s a playing lesson. You know what a playing lesson is? 6. Patient: A what? 7. Therapist: A playing lesson. 7. The Ethics Code is available online at http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

8. Patient: No. 9. Therapist: Too bad we can’t do a playing lesson. I can’t stand it. 10. Patient: What’s a playing lesson? 11. Therapist: Golf. When you are really seriously getting golf lessons, what you get is a pro. A pro on the course with you. And he’ll actually play the game with you and instructs you as you go. That’s a playing lesson. 12. Patient: Oh I almost had one. Last year, this is really – no – can I just tell you?

As the boundary between personal and professional concern has obviously been crossed here, any ‘conceptual clarification’ of the point in question (i.e. having the therapist personally instructing the patient how to enjoy sexual relations) would clearly be problematic. This could explain why, after remarking that he wished he could “coax the doctors and do this with (her)” [3], the therapist is quick to initiate a repair with “I mean” [5] (Fox Tree & Schrock, 2002), and use the metaphor of a playing lesson to describe his proposal [5]. Given his likely objective of wanting to make his proposal sound less controversial, one should certainly not expect the alignment metaphor type to be used to elaborate the correspondences between a playing lesson and sexual activity. It would moreover be clearly disadvantageous for the therapist to explicate any further details about the latter. Instead, the point of the metaphor is most likely to use a playing lesson as an example of a legitimate guided activity between a professional and his client, and to induce the patient to place sexual activity between them under the same category of socially unproblematic behaviour. This is further implied in [9], when the therapist seems to be suggesting that his frustration with not being able to do this legitimate activity can be rightly empathised with. Interestingly enough, however, the therapist’s strategy of not wanting to explicate the details of a playing lesson is thwarted when the patient, genuinely or otherwise, states that she does not know what a playing lesson is. This places the therapist in a tricky situation where he is almost compelled to explain what a playing lesson is, and its relevance to the illicit proposal. The prevailing category construction strategy of simply alluding to the fact that ‘both are acceptable’ must now give way to some elaboration of the source domain and its entities, including the professional coach, the game of golf, and the golf course [11]. This runs the risk of invoking the alignment metaphor type and its attendant expectations for the unsavoury target domain counterparts to also be explicated. Similar to the previous example, this example demonstrates the volatility of discourse objectives and situations in psychotherapeutic talk, as reflected by the ways speakers differently construct source-target relationships. It also raises a noteworthy point on how features of metaphor types appear to characterise even instances where speakers are avoiding, rather than pursuing the elaboration of

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metaphor. [5] and [11] respectively point towards the features of category construction and alignment, but neither the implied superordinate concept of ‘legitimate guided activity’ nor the target domain counterparts of a playing game are fully expressed in discourse. Metaphor types, then, should not be seen as automatically reflecting or fleshing out certain idealised discourse objectives such as ‘conceptual explication’ or ‘principle highlighting’, all of which can undergo different forms of pragmatic modulation in psychotherapeutic talk. In summary, we have seen how metaphor processing models originally of exclusive relevance to psycholinguistics can be re-contextualised as discourse analytic frameworks, and applied to study how metaphors are developed in accordance with different objectives in discourse. While certain situations in psychotherapeutic talk support Wee’s observation that there is often a preferred metaphor type, the nature of psychotherapy is such that we can expect instances of shifting discourse objectives which motivate speakers to construct source-target relations in more dynamic and pragmatically modulated ways. This observation accords with recent work which demonstrate the different ‘trajectories’ of metaphor in spontaneous discourse (Cameron & Deignan, 2006; Cameron et al., 2009), as well as the use of metaphor by speakers to “reposition” their interpersonal stance (Low, 2008). Having discussed how the characteristics of psychotherapeutic talk inform the study of metaphor and the notion of metaphor types, I now turn in the second half of the chapter to the prescriptive aim of applying the insights thus gained to psychotherapeutic practice. 4.6 The prescriptive aim: Applying knowledge of metaphor types In the first half of the chapter I examined examples which show that different therapeutic discourse objectives are associated with different strategies of metaphor development. The technicalities of the latter, as apparent from the diverse points of contention between advocates of different processing models, are however unlikely to have been earnestly considered by therapy researchers and practitioners.8 In accordance with the prescriptive aim of this book, I wish to outline the potential benefits which therapists could gain from a keener awareness of how metaphor development patterns are diversified in discourse. Therapists could then consider 8. In an article recommending a list of “stock metaphors” therapists can try on patients, for instance, Blenkiron (2005) repeatedly uses the term analogy (i.e. correspondence) even though the avowed intention is to convey class-inclusive “key messages” which subsume both sources and targets.



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

how the metaphors they use and encounter can be developed more strategically to cope with the objectives and circumstances at hand. Such strategic considerations can apply both to the therapist’s own metaphors, as well as patients’ metaphors which therapists are helping to develop. Therapists may find that paying closer attention to patients’ metaphors and facilitating their elaboration, rather than imposing or overwriting their substantive contents (i.e. the sources and targets used), would usefully come across as less coercive to patients. I will say more about the communication of therapists’ own metaphors in Chapter 7, when I discuss the linguistic co-text of extended metaphors. For now, I want to discuss how the notion of metaphor types is useful not only as a framework for discourse analysts, but as a technique for therapists who are keen on helping patients develop their own metaphors for therapeutic ends. I will review two existing protocols in the psychotherapy literature (Kopp & Craw, 1998; Sims, 2003; Sims & Whynot, 1997) which have been designed to help therapists with this task, and proceed to suggest how the notion of metaphor types can be applied to enhance these protocols. 4.6.1 Two protocols for developing patient metaphors Distinct frameworks or protocols have been proposed to help therapists guide patients in the development and potential therapeutic utilisation of their own metaphors. These typically outline concrete steps beginning with the noticing and affirmation of patients’ metaphors to their substantive amplification, and eventually culminating in the exploration of their relevance to the patients’ issues. I introduced one such protocol in Chapter 3 (Kopp and Craw, 1998) when I discussed the ideational resources of metaphors. In this section, besides commenting further on Kopp and Craw’s contribution, I will discuss a similar protocol formulated by Sims and Whynot (Sims, 2003; Sims & Whynot, 1997), which outlines six steps for working with client-generated metaphors. While Sims (2003: 531–532) believes that metaphor, “with a little nurturing, becomes a powerful tool for altering … experience in ways that promote adaptation and positive self-regard”, he does not elaborate how therapists can offer this nurturance. Furthermore, the authors of both protocols advise therapists to help patients “connect” their metaphoric sources and targets, but say little about what exactly this connection entails. I therefore aim to show how a working knowledge of metaphor types could help refine these protocols, especially with regard to the task of drawing useful connections between patients’ elaborated metaphors and the issues they are facing. Table 4 below summarises the two protocols and the steps they advocate:

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Table 4.  7-step protocol and 6-stage model for working with patient metaphors 7-step interview protocol (Kopp & Craw, 1998)

6-stage model (Sims, 2003; Sims & Whynot, 1997)

1. Notice metaphors

1. Hearing a metaphor

2. What does the metaphor look like?

2. Validating (i.e. affirming) a metaphor

3. Explore metaphor(s) as sensory image

3. Expanding the metaphor

4.  What is it like to be / what is your experience of / what are you feeling as you [the metaphoric image]?

4.  Play with the possibilities (for therapy with more than one patient, e.g. family therapy, this step also includes ‘involving others’)

5.  If you could change the image in any way, 5. Marking and selection how would you change it? 6.  What connections (parallels) do you see between [the metaphoric image] and the original situation?

6. Connection with the future

7.  How might the way you changed the image apply to the current situation?

There are many similarities between the two protocols in terms of both their theoretical orientation, and the actual procedures involved. Both emphasise the inherent validity of patients’ conceptualisations, and recommend that therapists seize opportunistically upon any promising metaphorical utterance(s) in order to develop and interpret them collaboratively with patients. When patients are elaborating their thoughts, therapists are reminded not to interrupt them with superfluous “interpretations, empathic reflections, comments, questions (other than those in the protocol), conclusions, and so forth” (Kopp & Craw, 1998: 307–308). Instead of succumbing to the “powerful propensity to focus exclusively on the assumed content of a client’s utterances” (2003: 530), therapists should encourage and guide patients to explore or ‘expand’ (Step 3 of both) their metaphor, enriching it with sensory details etc., with an eye on eventually clarifying its relevance towards the therapeutic issue(s) at hand. The call for therapists to explicitly invite the expansion of potential metaphors implies that patients might not always use metaphors with the intention of initiating the type of cross-domain understanding defined by metaphor scholars (see Cameron, 1999a: 114). This might especially be the case when patients use highly conventionalised expressions (e.g. we were on the same boat, I’m up against the wall, I’m down in the dumps), as opposed to metaphors which are novel and deliberate, such as the balloon example earlier in the chapter. Witztum, van der Hart and Friedman (1988) refer to these as “metaphoric kernel statements” (cf. Fernandez, 1977) as they represent essential, condensed content which are expressed in



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

conventional terms but can be further unpacked. It is also possible that patients’ metaphors initially apply to overly narrow (e.g. my husband runs over me like a locomotive) or general aspects (e.g. my life is a torrential storm) of the identified target issues, in which case the therapist should help focus them to better align with the issues under discussion. Whether the task involves amplifying substantive details of metaphoric images(s) or revivifying conventionalised or unintended metaphors, the overarching objective is to develop a metaphoric scenario conceptually rich enough to serve as a frame for the relevant target issues, where inferences can be insightfully drawn from the former and applied/mapped to the latter (Step 6–7 of Kopp and Craw). As it is expected that not all aspects of the enriched metaphoric scenario would eventually be used (cf. Chapter 3), Sims recommends therapists to select “from among the aspects of its expanded significance those that promote the current treatment goals, especially those bearing on the client’s management of the problem under discussion” (2003: 533; Step 5 of Sims). Therefore, while in the balloon example the patient seemed fairly eloquent and clear about the source, target, and the source-target mappings involved, these protocols make the assumption that patients are not necessarily fixated upon a definite source and/or target, and have not already determined the source-target relationship. Conceivably, an elicited expansion of my husband runs over me like a locomotive would lead to other previously unimagined source entities being introduced (driver, passengers, train stations etc.), which would in turn help expand the target to include other circumstances and individuals in the patient’s life. The therapist’s task could thus be summarised as (i) guiding the expansion of the source; (ii) locating the appropriate target; and (iii) deriving a therapeutically insightful relationship between the source and target, in order to help patients form “viable, adaptive metaphors” (Kopp & Craw, 1998: 310). However, neither protocol provides clear guidelines about how the connection between the metaphoric scenario and the patient’s issues is to be made at Step 6. Sims and Whynot (1997: 4) eschew such instruction instead, leaving therapists “to decide how explicit they wish to be in connecting the imagery and associations generated… with the specific goals of therapy”. This accords with the ideal of ‘non-coercive therapy’ (Siegelman, 1990), and rightfully takes into account the improvisational possibilities when elaborating metaphors in ad hoc fashion. However, similar to what was discussed in the second half of Chapter 3, it would not transgress the boundaries of non-coercion to refine the protocols to help therapists bridge sources and targets in more systematic and strategic ways. I want to suggest that a working knowledge of metaphor types, which define psychologically and discursively realistic ways in which sources and targets relate to each other, provides therapists with a useful guide as they steer the trajectory of metaphor development in accordance with prevailing therapy goals.

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4.6.2 Metaphor types as different bridges between sources and targets The following extract, taken from Ferrara (1994: 139–141)9, is from a therapy session involving a college educated Vietnam War veteran presently employed as a hospital orderly. I will emphasise how the collaborative development of the patient’s metaphor accords in stepwise fashion with the protocols, and illustrate how alternative trajectories of metaphor development can be described in terms of the notion of metaphor types. 1. Therapist: Can you look at your own life, kind of on a continuum? Look down the road of that line and see what that’s gonna do in your own life? 2. Patient: Look on down the road? 3. Therapist: Yeah kinda visualize what your own life will be like if you don’t deal with some of it. Your problems. Can you see how it might complicate your life? 4. Patient: It will just continue the way it is. 5. Therapist: Kind of like a snowball? 6. Patient: No, no, not a snowball. Just kinda floating, floating down the river. 7. Therapist: Floating down the river. 8. Patient: That’s what I’m doing now. That’s what I was afraid I was gonna get back into after this. I said something the first time I talked to you about floating and being afraid of going back into floating. That’s just, you know, floating, drifting… 9. Therapist: So you’re adrift right now? 10. Patient: Yeah. And I feel dead and I feel and I’m – I drink to feel a little bit deader. No, that’s not true. 11. Therapist: Feel depressed or numb? 12. Patient: Yeah. 13. Therapist: Numb, you feel? 14. Patient: Yeah. Yeah. 15. Therapist: What’s it like to be floating down the river? Tell me more. 16. Patient: It’s comfortable. It’s safe. Everything just keeps on an even keel, you know. 17. Therapist: Mm hmm. 18. Patient: You’re just kinda floating… 19. Therapist: Kind of in a canoe? Going down the river, or – 20. Patient: No, more like a great ole big barge. On a great old big river. 21. Therapist: Very stable, kinda. 22. Patient: Yeah. Plenty of room to spread out and sit in the sun. Yeah, and you don’t have to worry about falling off the edge. 9. By permission of Oxford University Press (USA).



Chapter 4.  Metaphor types and the rhetorical development of metaphors

23. Therapist: Mm hmm. 24. Patient: And sun, you know, it’s kinda hazy. It’s not really clear sun. It’s kinda hazy. 25. Therapist: Mm hmm. 26. Patient: Kinda half asleep, that’s what it’s like. 27. Therapist: What happens when you kind of come to the falls, the falls that are down there, about two miles down the river? 28. Patient: Get the hell off the river. 29. Therapist: That’s certainly one way to handle it. Get out. 30. Patient: I feel alot of discomfort. That’s what happened last month. I hit those falls last month (noise). 31. Therapist: (referring to noise) I don’t know why it did that. So that’s what happened, this last time there was kind of an external situation that sort of forced you out of your boat… 32. Patient: It was uncomfortable but I was, I was pretty, I was enjoying it too. And I didn’t want to go back to just floating. It was uncomfortable and I was out, I don’t, I been floating a long time. 33. Therapist: Mm hmm. Well, you’ve found that it works for you in a sense. 34. Patient: What works for me? 35. Therapist: Floating. 36. Patient: Because I stay comfortable and – 37. Therapist: In a sense, but it may now be inappropriate. It may not be working as well as it did in the past. 38. Patient: Mm. Yeah, I’d like to have a little excitement now and then. 39. Therapist: Some rapids. 40. Patient: Yeah (laugh). Something I can keep in control of maybe and not drown. But yeah, I think I’m bored.

A month prior to this session, the patient had been fired under suspicion of drug theft. Although he was indeed a drug user, he maintained his innocence of the theft and had recently been reinstated. The ordeal of having to defend himself to keep his job had been particularly challenging for him, since he had always tended to avoid confronting his problems in life. In the extract, the therapist is addressing this tendency by having him contemplate the long term effects of remaining overly passive about his problems (Line 3). While it is the therapist here who first suggested the metaphor of a snowball (Line 5), the patient was quick to point out his preferred metaphor of “floating down the river” (Line 6) as a description of his passive attitude. The therapist’s ready acceptance of his idea (Line 7) accords with Steps 1 and 2 of the protocols (notice a metaphor, hearing a metaphor, validating a metaphor), and sets the scene for subsequent exploration. In Line 8, the patient talked about being afraid of “going back into floating”, which suggests that he is already entertaining in his

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mind what the present source image exactly relates to in the target domain (i.e. a specific previous incident). Nevertheless, in line with Step 3 of the protocols (exploring/expanding the metaphor as sensory image), the subsequent expansion of the metaphor from Lines 9 to 29 was performed in a relatively open ended manner, with an emphasis on amplifying the details of the source domain. For instance, the therapist prompted him to describe his feelings when floating down the river (Lines 11, 13, 15), which invokes other associated details such as the type of vessel he was in, the experience of “spreading out” and “sitting in the sun” (Line 22), and the state of being “half asleep” (Line 27). The therapist also contributes to the developing metaphor by suggesting the looming presence of “falls two miles down the river” (Line 27). During this process of elaboration, there is no pressure to immediately identify how these elaborated details are to be interpreted in the context of the patient’s real life (i.e. the target domain). It was in fact the patient himself who transited into the interpretation phase (Steps 6 and 7 – connections with the original situation/application to the current situation) when he equated the perilous falls with his recent job troubles. This subsequently led to an insightful discussion of how falls, “rapids” (Line 39), and other occasional but survivable (Line 40) perils might positively bring “a little excitement now and then” (Line 38) to his routine life. It can be said that the connections between source and target have at this point been successfully attempted. The initial metaphoric image of “floating down the river” has been amplified to include other elements which inhere in such a voyage (e.g. being in a barge, hitting the falls, facing some rapids but not drowning). These elements have in turn shed some light on the client’s circumstances (e.g. living in comfort, encountering job problems, facing occasional but survivable difficulties). The point I now want to highlight is that the above outcome, while positive in its own right, represents just one among the many ways in which a metaphoric relationship between “floating down a river” and life could be constructed. A working knowledge of metaphor types could help therapists steer the trajectory of metaphor elaboration according to identified treatment or discussion goals, without having to impose changes to the patient’s preferred metaphoric image(s). The alignment and category metaphor types offer two broad templates for elaborating how source concept(s) are meant to shed light on target concept(s). Consider first the alignment metaphor type, which emphasizes rigorous matches between elements in the source and in the target. As it currently stands, the above extract already demonstrates this metaphor type to some extent, since almost every mentioned element in the source is eventually related with a corresponding element in the target (i.e. floating in a barge → living life comfortably, hitting the falls → encountering job problems, facing rapids but not drowning → facing



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occasional, survivable difficulties). Imagine, however, that the therapist wants to further highlight the relationship between the patient’s passive attitude and his ability to respond to various crises in life. The target domain elements of “other crises”, and perhaps “other ways of handling crises”, would thus require the patient to come up with corresponding source domain entities. It would therefore be strategic to expand the initial “floating down the river” image to invoke the corresponding source entities and explore their interrelationships, in anticipation of the eventual bridging exercise between source and target. If necessary, the therapist could offer useful prompts along such lines as do you see other people not just floating along, but actually steering their boats? or what other obstacles are there in the river, and are you able to react fast enough to avoid them? Sims and Whynot indirectly allude to this correspondent strategy when they remark that “each addition to the development of the image has a parallel, but unstated impact on the other side of the equation” (1997: 3). Figure 2 below illustrates what a hypothetical, expanded version of the extract would have looked like with the application of the alignment metaphor type.

Floating in a barge

Living life comfortably

Otherpeople in the river

Other people in client’s life

People steering, not floating

Being active, not passive

Fallsand other obstacles

Job problem and other problems

Facing some rapids but not drowning

Occasional, survivable difficulties

Figure 2.  Applying the alignment metaphor type

Alternatively, consider the category metaphor type. If the strength of the alignment approach is that it guides the discovery of new elements and relations, the strength of the category approach is that it allows one to see existing elements and relations in a different and hopefully memorable light. From Lines 20 to 22, for example, the patient specifies that he prefers floating in an “ole big barge” rather than a canoe

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because a barge is more stable. The evoked idea of stability is a common attribute which has immediate relevance both within the source domain of “floating down a river”, and the target domain of the patient’s circumstances. The therapist could at this point prompt the patient to describe in detail his ideal barge, which might reveal other attributes (comfortable, safe, beautiful etc.) that provide insights about his ideal life (see Figure 3). This contrasts functionally with the alignment approach, which is more concerned with composing a fuller set of entities and relations in the source domain, before exploring their relevance in the target. Stable, comfortable, safe, beautiful…

An ideal barge

An ideal life

Figure 3.  Applying the category metaphor type

The category metaphor type might also be helpful in cases where the source domain (in the case, boating) is experientially familiar to the patient, which should help evoke a more experientially grounded and more subjectively valid set of attributes. Sims (2003: 534) described a patient who was advised to try new activities like starting an exercise program, but was reluctant to do so because “doing these things would be like wearing a new pair of shoes”. He recounted how they began to discuss their literal experiences with new shoes, and how evoked attributes such as making changes and taking risks offered new insights for the patient who was trying to come to terms with her phlegmatic disposition towards new experiences. In this way, the expression a new pair of shoes further provided what psychotherapists like to call “shorthand”; i.e. a convenient means of indexing and invoking previously discussed concepts without needing to explain them again (Stott et al., 2010: 215). Juxtaposing this anecdote with Sims and Whynot’s previously mentioned comment that “each addition to the development of the image has a parallel, but unstated impact on the other side of the equation” (Sims & Whynot, 1997: 3), we can see that some therapists are already implicitly aware of the workings of the two metaphor types. It is the aim of this chapter to further raise this awareness, and make it more explicit. Table 5 thus presents an enhanced version of the protocols, which can be appended to Steps 6 of the existing ones.



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Table 5.  Enhanced protocol for connecting sources and targets Connecting metaphoric image (source) with original situation (target) – What is the strategic focus of the present metaphor? To discover previously unconsidered elements/relations in the domain of the client’s life circumstances

To discover previously unconsidered attributes that characterise the domain of the client’s life circumstances

Use alignment metaphor type

Use category metaphor type

– Expand the source domain to elicit different entities, focusing on the relations between them – Transfer these entities and relations to corresponding ones in the target domain

– Focus on attributes of source domain entities which could be applied to the target domain – Transfer these attributes and emphasise their applicability to both source and target

In summary, I have argued that existing protocols on the use of metaphors in psychotherapy do not provide adequate guidance on how to derive therapeutically insightful relationships between source(s) and target(s). It could be that the authors of these protocols prefer not to intervene too much with the metaphor authorship of patients. Another reason could also be that they have yet to consider the principled and strategic ways in which such guidance could be offered. The technique of metaphor types involves a minimal level of intervention because patients remain free to choose which source domain(s) they prefer. Yet it provides useful options for elaborating these source domain(s) in different ways, depending on the strategic focus of the therapy session. Metaphor types therefore exemplify how linguistic and discourse analytic research can meaningfully contribute to psychotherapy practice. Nevertheless, as we have seen from the earlier discussion on shifting discourse circumstances, actual therapeutic scenarios may not always present therapists with a straightforward and sensible choice between the metaphor types. In some situations, therapists may well have to bear in mind the characteristics of both, and apply them in combination within a single episode of talk. As it remains an open question the types of discourse circumstances therapists and patients may encounter, it would be desirable for interested therapists to attempt to apply the present ideas, and report on their feasibility and effects. Anecdotal feedback on using metaphor types would be most welcome, if only as a preliminary gauge of how compatible theoretical ideas from linguistics and discourse analysis are with real therapy situations.

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4.7 Summary The primary aim of this chapter has been to illustrate how perspectives in metaphor research can be broadened by pursuing the sort of methodological interaction seen here between psycholinguistics and discourse analysis. Notwithstanding the important caveat that metaphor processing and production are fundamentally distinct, the notion of metaphor types represents a creative and positive step in the correct direction. I have attempted to build upon Wee’s pioneering work by analysing examples from psychotherapy – a paradigm instance of spoken discourse characterised by dynamic discourse objectives and pragmatic complexities. Predictably, the characteristics of psychotherapeutic talk are reflected in the different ways in which source-target relations are spontaneously constructed, an observation which has also led us to rethink some initial assumptions about metaphor types. I then proceeded in the second half of the chapter to discuss how a working knowledge of metaphor types bears implications for therapists who are helping patients to draw purposive connections between elaborated metaphoric images and therapeutic issues. Existing protocols proposed by Kopp, Sims, and others can be enhanced by taking into account the fact that there are different strategic ways to construct source-target relations. These strategies are therapeutically conducive in that they do not intervene with the freedom for patients to choose their source concepts, yet offer useful options to elaborate source concepts in varying ways.

chapter 5

Metaphoric consistency and variability as therapeutic discourse strategies 5.1 Introduction Many researchers have been interested in how ostensibly underlying conceptual metaphors might influence the relationship between neighbouring metaphoric expressions at the surface level of discourse. Gibbs (1999a) outlined several theoretical possibilities regarding the extent to which conceptual metaphors underlie language comprehension and, by implication, production. On the one hand, a strong cognitivist view should predict neighbouring metaphoric expressions to be consistent with respect to the underlying conceptual metaphor(s). This is because conceptual mappings “activated” by instantiating expressions should exert some cognitive pressure, priming the subsequent use of metaphoric expressions which continue to instantiate the activated mappings, and inhibiting the use of metaphoric expressions which do not (Allbritton et al., 1995; Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). On the other hand, analyses of actual text and talk across different discourse genres provide scant evidence for such cognitive pressures, and reveal instead the dynamic variability of metaphor use (Cameron, 2007a; Eubanks, 1999; Howe, 2008; Quinn, 1991). People seem to have little difficulty understanding or producing neighbouring metaphors which do not “share any imagistic ontology or any direct inferential entailments” (Kimmel, 2010: 98). They switch readily between different source concepts for both spoken (Quinn, 1991) and written metaphors (Shen & Balaban, 1999), and base their selection of source concepts on how well they are able to express the prevailing point (Howe, 2008). It has been suggested that analyses of metaphoric text and talk should take into account both the phenomenon of consistency and variability, and examine the various discursive circumstances which induce discourse producers to choose to remain consistent, or introduce varying metaphors (Goatly, 1997; Kimmel, 2010). This chapter illustrates the consistency and variability of metaphor use as discourse strategies motivated by different therapeutic circumstances. Within both the communicative and interpretive paradigms, which differ in their opinion on whether therapists or patients should initiate metaphors (see Section 2.7.1), there has been an inclination towards advocating the merits of metaphoric consistency, and overlooking the potential functions of variability. The communicative

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paradigm encourages therapists to exploit and elaborate the inferential logic of their metaphors (Erickson & Rossi, 1976/80), which often come in the form of preconceived stories or narratives (Blenkiron, 2005, 2010; Burns, 2001, 2004; Loue, 2008). The interpretive paradigm, on the other hand, is concerned with providing guidelines for therapists to help patients elaborate their own metaphors (Kopp, 1995; Kopp & Craw, 1998; Sims, 2003; Sims & Whynot, 1997). Both paradigms seem to subscribe to the underlying assumption that once a suitable source concept which can provide insights about the target of interest is found, its inferences and connotations should be fully exploited to arrive at the richest interpretation possible. Kopp and Craw (1998: 308) described the case of a patient who felt that “there is a large dark cloud hanging over me that will rain AIDS down upon me”. The patient reportedly found it beneficial to be asked to elaborate what else he ‘saw’ in the metaphoric scenario, what they represented, and how they related to the target topic of his physical illness. Besides the potential for a consistently elaborated metaphor to constitute therapeutic material (Chapter 3), other noteworthy benefits of consistency include the sense of coherence it generates (D. Ponterotto, 2003), and the opportunity it gives therapists to continually affirm their patients’ ideas and conceptualisations. Furthermore, the co-elaboration of metaphors is also symptomatic of a positive relationship between therapists and patients, who are allied in the construction of shared meanings in therapy. Angus and Rennie (1988: 552) refer to this as meaning conjunction. Despite the many demonstrable benefits of adopting a strategy of metaphoric consistency, empirical analyses of interactional discourse suggest that variability is a more natural outcome of the “interweaving threads of ideas” (Cameron et al., 2009: 83) speakers bring to conversation. In particular, there appears to be a need for caution against an unreflective idealisation of consistency evident in phrases such as meaning conjunction, which implies that the flip side of meaning disjunction (i.e. instances of misunderstanding and non-collaboration) would then be categorically associated with non-consistency in metaphor use. In other words, although it is likely that metaphoric consistency is therapeutically helpful, insights from discourse analytic studies compel us to pay equal attention to how flexible ways of using metaphor could also turn out to be facilitative towards important prescriptive aims (Cirillo & Crider, 1995). Therapists in particular would benefit from a keener awareness of how metaphors can be deployed and managed with both consistent and varying fashion, as the prevailing circumstances dictate. Drawing from Goatly’s (1997) characterisation of possible interplays between source and target concepts, I first introduce four categories which schematically describe how an introduced metaphor may be consistently or variably elaborated. I then turn to each of these categories and provide examples which



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demonstrate how therapeutic work is advanced through both the consistent and variable uses of metaphor. Both the descriptive and prescriptive aims of the book are in this way simultaneously attended to. For the descriptive aim, the analysis reveals therapeutically grounded motivations for interlocutors to strategically vary their metaphors. Compared to the bulk of existing work which focus on monologic texts such as poems, newspaper articles and interview responses, it will be observed that metaphoric variability in my dialogic examples of psychotherapy are often interactionally enacted (cf. Cameron, 2007b; Ferrara, 1991, 1994). That is, varying metaphoric conceptualisations figure prominently in the mutual construction of meaning in unfolding therapeutic talk. The implications of this observation carry over to the prescriptive aim, as it reveals the strategic aspects of metaphoric variability which have been overlooked due to the emphasis on consistency within the therapeutic literature. Additionally, the four schematic categories introduced in this chapter also serve as reference points for therapists to reflect upon their own variable use of metaphors, especially in the context of specific therapeutic situations which may recur across different patients (Cirillo & Crider, 1995). 5.2 Categories of metaphoric consistency and variability The categories guiding the analysis in this chapter assume the source and target of a metaphor as its primary components. In this way, metaphoric consistency can be defined as the continuous pursuit of inferences inherent in a source-target association, while variability refers to switching sources and/or targets within some stretch of discourse constituted by neighbouring metaphoric expressions. Three sub-categories can be further derived from the broad category of variability. The first two sub-categories describe cases where only one component – either the source or the target – changes, while the other component remains constant and anchors the discourse. Firstly, after a metaphor is introduced, speakers can retain the introduced source concept and apply it to the discussion of different target topics. Conversely, speakers can remain with the target topic of discussion, but switch to different metaphoric sources. Goatly (1997) respectively refers to these patterns of source-target interplay as multivalency and diversification. The third subcategory of variability describes cases where speakers appear to switch arbitrarily between different sources and targets, thus creating a semblance of incoherence (Kimmel, 2010: 108) which in the context of psychotherapy might require some degree of management. All four categories are summarised below.

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Consistency i. Neighbouring metaphoric expressions which evince pursuit of the inferences/ entailments of an introduced source-target association. Variability ii. Neighbouring metaphoric expressions which retain previously established source concept(s), but refer to different target(s) iii. Neighbouring metaphoric expressions which retain previously established target concept(s), but employ different source(s) iv. Neighbouring metaphoric expressions which switch between different source(s) and target(s) Each of these descriptive categories will be illustrated with examples of therapeutic circumstances motivating their occurrence. However, they do not suggest any previously undiscovered patterns in the use of metaphors in discourse which are uniquely associated with psychotherapeutic talk. My present intention also implies that I will not be concerned with measuring, for instance, the relative frequency with which these categories occur in the corpus. The theoretical value of these categories lies instead within the context of the prescriptive aim of this book, in that they provide a ready handle for therapists to manage as well as reflect upon the consistency and variability of their own metaphor use, and that of their patients, when similar circumstances arise in the course of their work. 5.3 Analysis 5.3.1 Metaphoric consistency The analyses of previous chapters have already suggested that consistent co-elaboration of an introduced metaphor is often seen as positive in therapy. Within ‘client-centred’ approaches, for example, verbal protocols have been formulated to establish the procedural identification, selection, and faithful elaboration of patient metaphors (Kopp & Craw, 1998; Sims & Whynot, 1997). The following extract involves a patient who has been frustrated with her inability to express her feelings, which she feels is affecting the progress of therapy. Upon her use of a “pushing” metaphor (Line 11) to describe what she wants the therapist to do, he responds by elaborating the image schematic logic (Johnson, 1987) of pushing and pulling as a resource to communicate his stance on how he could help her. 1. Patient: But I don’t feel like I’m expressing like what I really feel right now. That’s why I should try, right? Like there’s sort of – like I think I just blocked everything, you know. Like I just –



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2. Therapist: Something about me? 3. Patient: No. Except – well, yes and no. I don’t know what’s happening like in here for me, you know, if anything’s – what sort of things are really getting resolved. But then I don’t even know what, you know, to get resolved. 4. Therapist: What’s that got to do with me? Try to figure out up here what that’s got to do with me. 5. Patient: Maybe I feel like you should help me. 6. Therapist: Let’s assume you’re right, okay? And now let’s say what has that got to do with me. What am I doing or not doing that’s been connected by that? 7. Patient: Maybe you should sort of – I don’t know. 8. Therapist: Well, try. Maybe I should – 9. Patient: Push – 10. Therapist: Try, come on. 11. Patient: You know, make me push at things more so I really – I don’t feel I get in very deeply into things. And like it’s really hard for me because I never can. I mean, I just don’t want to sort of. Like I do everything sort of (inaudible) I think. 12. Therapist: So you want me to be helpful (inaudible) you want? Is that what you’re saying? 13. Patient: Yeah, but then I – yeah, but then I say well I should be doing all the leaning on myself. 14. Therapist: Yeah, I have mixed – let me tell you how I how I feel about that. That’s something – you’re onto something about that, pushed or should you be pushed. Should you push it out or should I pull it out, or should I push at you. You’re onto something there it seems to me. My feeling about that is that one part of that felt very good to me, like I felt released to push more on you. And then there was another side of that to that said wait a minute, you’re one of the most pushiest therapists in the business – (laughs) – you know? See what I mean? 15. Patient: Yeah. 16. Therapist: I see myself as being fairly pushy as a counsellor already. 17. Patient: With me? 18. Therapist: With everybody. I have a reputation for being pushy…

The therapist repeatedly tries to get the patient to clarify how she feels he could help her (Lines 4, 6, 8, 10). The patient relates that she is uncertain about “what sort of things are really getting resolved”, or what requires resolution at all (Line 3). When urged to elaborate, she expresses her wish for the therapist to make her “push at things more” and “get deeper” into them (Line 11). These metaphors describe the process of scrutinising her issues as the exertion of a physical force, and the extent

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of scrutiny as physical depth. This establishes a metaphoric scenario in which an entity pushes at an impediment to get deeper into a region. Of present interest is how the therapist acknowledges the usefulness of this conceptualisation (you’re onto something about that [Line 14]) and responds to the patient by elaborating its entailments, thus ensuring a common (metaphoric) understanding of the therapeutic predicament they find themselves in. Reasoning within the domain of physical force, he exploits the distinction between pushing and pulling to conceptualise the perspectival difference between patient and therapist (should you push it out or should I pull it out [Line 14]). The therapeutically important notion of agency is also involved here (see Section 3.3.4) as to whether the patient should do the pushing, or whether the therapist should indirectly expel the impediment by pushing on the patient. The therapist expresses his dilemma between wanting to push more, and refraining from pushing too much as he is already “fairly pushy1” (Lines 14, 16). This extract affirms some fundamental points about the aforementioned benefits of metaphoric consistency. The therapist is sensitive towards the inferential productivity of his patient’s metaphor, and elaborates its entailments to communicate his stance regarding the important issue of agency in therapeutic change. Doing so with the patient’s metaphor also facilitates mutual understanding of the issue at hand, exemplifying Angus and Rennie’s (1988) notion of meaning conjunction. However, the analysis also raises an important point often overlooked in discussions of metaphoric consistency in the therapeutic literature. That is, although metaphoric consistency is suggestive of some degree of co-operation and mutual understanding between therapist and patient, this does not always translate to the ideal situation of therapist and patient actually agreeing upon the issue(s) under discussion. In this example, although the elaborated metaphor does well to create a framework for discussing the patient’s concerns, it is by itself unable to create any actual consensus on the best way to bring about therapeutic change. 5.3.2 Metaphoric variability: Same source, different targets The first type of variability, which Goatly (1997) calls multivalency, describes situations where source concept(s) established earlier in the discourse are subsequently extended to different target concept(s). Kimmel (2010: 108) remarks that multivalency can be used as a discourse strategy in political news reports to create an impression of thematic equivalence between seemingly unrelated targets. In the 1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the conventionalised sense of pushy as “excessively or unpleasantly forward or self-assertive”.



Chapter 5.  Metaphoric consistency and variability as therapeutic discourse strategies

therapeutic context, to the extent that a source domain can plausibly “scope over” different targets (Kövecses, 2003b), switching targets while retaining the source is likewise a strategic means for therapists to suggest potential connections between principally separate target topics. For example, a patient who faces interpersonal problems at work might also be struggling with other personal relationships, and these different areas could be usefully brought under a common focus via their plausible association with a common source concept. The strategy of multivalency also affords a way for therapists to transit between target topics with minimal disruptiveness, under the semblance of connection to the common source. Consider the following two extracts occurring several turns apart from each other within the same session. In the first extract, the patient relates the process of considering the pros and cons of a prospective extra-marital affair, which he metaphorically describes as upsetting his “balance” and “harmony”. In Line 4, the therapist replaces these terms with the (near) synonymous “equilibrium”. The patient concurs with the aptness of this rephrasing, and uses it himself in Line 5. 1. Patient: Yeah, with – well, without knowing what it was I was going for, you know, myself. And it was kind of like I felt like well, here I am maybe jeopardizing what I do have, and I’m not really going with any object in mind, you know, with like well is it worth going, you know. So it kind of upset me because, you know, kind of upset my own balance and, you know, my harmony with things. 2. Therapist: It sounds like it really disturbed you. 3. Patient: Yeah, it – 4. Therapist: You know, jarred some kind of equilibrium. 5. Patient: Yeah, because no matter, you know, no matter how I’m living, I can, you know, develop some kind of equilibrium out of it all. And this upset it.

Notice how the patient appears to generalise the equilibrium metaphor as a description of his extra-marital situation, to how he handles other situations in his life. The discussion continues over the next few conversational turns, leading to the second extract: 1. Therapist: It’s like you really felt – I mean, I can really see in a way, it’s like god damn it, you really felt like you’re hurting and suffering for some ego gratification in a way and to know that you’re needed and wanted and can do something for someone. 2. Patient: Yeah. 3. Therapist: And it would have been nice to have that. But, but I risk throwing too much away. 4. Patient: Yeah.

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5. Therapist: I have to weigh that, you know, against what I have. And maybe part of the confusion or upset equilibrium is like it raised all those things, you know. We talked about them before, but it kind of made them feel a little more present because in a way it was a microcosmic kind of decision that you think about every now and then. 6. Patient: Right. 7. Therapist: Are you kind of now sensing the kind of the uncertainty of that disequilibrium about your marriage?

The therapist continues to develop the equilibrium metaphor by suggesting that the patient is “weighing” the pros and cons (Line 5), a process which raises other related issues (it raised all those things, you know). Notice how the therapist switches intermittently to the first person pronoun in Lines 3 and 5 (I risk throwing too much away; I have to weigh that, you know, against what I have) and appears to be ‘thinking aloud’ from the patient’s perspective (cf. Yamaguchi, 2005), illustrating how therapeutic ideals like empathy can be enacted by conventional linguistic resources (Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2004: 185). Our primary focus however lies in the strategic variability of metaphor use which occurs at Line 7. The therapist continues to refer to the source concept of (dis)equilibrium, but now shifts the target topic away from the patient’s individual balance and harmony, to that of his marriage. This shift is not likely to be perceived by the patient as abrupt since he has already indicated the general import of the equilibrium metaphor in Line 5 of the previous extract. A further noteworthy point is the subtlety of this transition, partly achieved by hedging the applicability of ‘equilibrium’ to his marriage with the use of kind of as a ‘tuning device’ (Cameron & Deignan, 2003) (see Chapter 7). The extension of an established source to a target different than the one originally intended achieves two therapeutically meaningful objectives. Firstly, it naturalises a topical transition to the patient’s marriage, which is of obvious importance in the present context. Secondly, it establishes a potential connection between the old and new targets; i.e. the patient’s individual psyche, and the state of his marriage. This is visible as the therapist and patient proceeded to discuss how being with his wife and lover brought out different attitudes and feelings from the patient. The strategy of multivalency can be said to be generally useful in cases where therapists are aiming to illuminate overlapping aspects between principally distinct issues.



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5.3.3 Same target, different sources The next type of variability describes the converse case of having multiple source concepts for a single target. Goatly (1997) refers to this as diversification, where each source concept is intended to contribute a partial perspective on a multifaceted target. In an interactional context like psychotherapy, where meanings are often mutually constructed and negotiated, the use of alternative source concepts also performs functions other than the presentation of diverse grounds. One such function is for a speaker to suggest what is deemed to be a more apt conceptualisation for the prevailing target topic, to replace what was previously suggested. Contrary to what might be commonly supposed, it is apparent from the upcoming example that the task of suggesting new perspectives is not reserved for therapists. The therapist and patient have been talking about some recent life experiences of Matt, a friend of the latter, and how they have resulted in drastic personality changes which might be affecting the patient’s outlook towards life. The therapist uses a journey metaphor to describe how Matt “got taken over by something” and “shuttled off on another track” (Line 1), implying the negative evaluation that he has lost his bearings. The patient does not agree with this suggestion, and elaborates an alternative source concept of ‘exercising’, which expresses his own evaluation that Matt’s recent experiences have been positive, and have made him “stronger” (Line 2). 1. Therapist: That sounds like you’re saying… is that Matt is still on the way to changing a lot of things about himself. And sometimes along that road things get shaken too much and that Matt got taken over by something or like, Matt didn’t stay, like Matt got shuttled off on another track or something. I’m not really sure about that. 2. Patient: Well it’s like I was thinking of, like an exercise. You’d take so much exercise and it will build you up, you’ll be stronger for it…

Just as concurrence upon the source concepts used does not always indicate agreement in the wider sense, the suggestion of alternative sources does not always indicate disagreement. The following extract shows how alternative conceptualisations enrich the therapeutic discussion by shedding additional light on other aspects of the target, without undermining or contradicting the contribution of previous sources. The patient is struggling with a fear of new experiences and meeting new people. Although he appears to understand that he is “the one that has to solve the problem” (Line 1), he still wishes for the therapist to solve the problem on his behalf (Lines 1, 2).

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1. Patient: Meeting new people, it sort of carries… So you have, well that was the idea. I’m going to have to give myself something. I am confused mentally. I mean I can’t think straight. So I also understand that I am the one that has to solve the problem and not you but I sort of want you to do it for me or something, I don’t know. 2. Therapist: Um hmm, um hmm. It might, I guess what you are saying is that maybe it is supposed to be that you solve the problem or something but the thing you really feel is that you would hope very much that I would. 3. Patient: Yeah, that is very close to it. It is amazing though. After thinking about this thing for a year and a half I have come up with nothing that remotely resembles an insight into it. I mean I just don’t, as I said before it has just been going around in circles. I don’t have a very clear perception or something. 4. Therapist: In other words I guess you are saying there, “I’ve wrestled and wrestled with this thing and I don’t see a bit more about it, don’t understand it a bit better than I did at the outset.” 5. Patient: Yeah, that is exactly it. I just don’t know how one goes about changing that sort of thing.

In Line 3, the patient describes his inability to understand his problem as not having a “clear perception”, and the metaphor of “going around in circles” to describe its protracted nature. To summarise and augment his description, the therapist remains consistent with the patient’s vision metaphor (I don’t see a bit more about it), but also contributes the additional source concept of wrestling (I’ve wrestled and wrestled with this thing [Line 4]), presumably to highlight a previously unexpressed aspect of intensity. Repetition of the verb also underlines the protracted futility of the patient’s attempts. The insightfulness of this complementary source concept is confirmed by the patient in Line 4 (Yeah, that is exactly it). We have looked at two examples where source concepts ontologically distinct from those previously established (i.e. journey vs. exercise, perceiving and going around in circles vs. wrestling) were used to suggest alternatives, or highlight previously unconsidered aspects. In his analysis of diversification as a discourse strategy in political news reports, Kimmel (2010: 107) also provides examples where the sources used are ontologically related through “image schematic affinity” or “shared inferences”. I now present an example in which the new source concept is ontologically related to, or conceptually closer to the previously established source. Here, the conceptual similarity is exploited not so much to highlight new aspects regarding the target, but to attenuate the strength of a previous claim which has caused some disagreement. The patient and therapist are discussing their early impressions of the interpersonal dynamics between them. This constitutes an



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important aspect of Relational Therapy (Safran, 2002) which, as indicated in the data source, is the school of therapy presently practiced. 1. Patient: … Seems like the theory is based on the idea that our relationship is somehow going to be a manifestation of our relationships with other people and so therefore as things come up with us, then of course, we are going to confront them boldly. And I guess what is not clear to me is what if we get along? …(DETAILS OMITTED)… So there is some need for instruction I think. I mentioned that it seemed sort of like the risk would be having something that is relatively disconnected outside world. Although I will give you credit I found this little skill useful this week. I went a practicing, as it were, and I found this little pugilistic stance very helpful. 2. Therapist: Pugilistic stance? 3. Patient: Well, yeah. You know, sort of push, push, push. Don’t be afraid go through the range of emotions and boldly go where no man or woman has gone before; or something like that or push ahead. And last week was definitely sort of good. 4. Therapist: Yeah, you put it in a very combative context. 5. Patient: It seemed more like a fast racquet ball game. It was definitely sort of, yeah, like, “When you said this you meant this.” “What is that coming from?” It doesn’t’ seem like a huge leap to call that pugilistic or combative, all be it in a friendly sort of way, I mean obviously we are not coming to blows but…

The patient expresses concerns that his relationship with the therapist does not accurately reflect how he relates with other people, thus making his therapy seem “relatively disconnected outside world” [sic] (Line 1). However, he liked the “pugilistic stance” adopted by the therapist in the previous session. As he elaborates in Line 3, the metaphor of pugilism construes the therapist as a firm adversary who pushes him to extend his limits. The therapist interprets this to imply that his style is “combative” (Line 4) and adversarial. The patient appears to sense the therapist’s reservations about this evaluation, and offers a new metaphor (a fast racquet ball game [Line 5]) which nonetheless continues to exemplify fast paced, adversarial activities. This allows him to maintain the gist of his initial evaluation. However, as a seeming hedge and compromise, the grounds of the metaphor are now modified to become something like ‘adversarial activities conducted in a friendly sort of way’ (Line 5). Compared to the previous examples where ontologically distinct sources were used for semantic purposes (i.e. to express distinct points about the target), this example demonstrates the more pragmatically motivated aspect of variability. A minimally distinct but nonetheless different source allows the patient to

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negotiate a compromise between the therapist’s point and his own. Whether initiated by therapist or patient, such strategies of compromise and accommodation have been noted to be characteristic of psychotherapeutic talk (Ferrara, 1991). The flexibility of metaphoric conceptualisation and description seen in this example suggests how metaphor can be an important accommodative resource in communicative contexts such as psychotherapy. 5.3.4 Switching between different sources and targets Among all the categories presented in this chapter, it is most difficult to conceive of a strategic rationale for switching between different source and target concepts in therapeutic talk. The reason is that in previous categories, at least one component of the unfolding metaphoric discourse was held constant – the source, or target, or both. Instances of variability have been shown to be motivated by how the source can potentially scope over other therapeutically relevant issues, or how the prevailing conceptualisation of the target can be enriched by other sources. When therapy participants do not anchor the discourse upon any of these components, the outcome can appear incoherent or indicate a measure of communicative difficulty. In the following example, the patient begins by relating the stress he feels from his interpersonal relationships, but quickly enters into other topics within one conversational turn. 1. Patient: You know what, I find all relationships stressful. (laughs) You know what, I mean, that’s just really what it is. I meet somebody and the first thing I do is I start, I get out a new piece of granite and I start etching stuff into it, you know. And you know the old saying, (inaudible) in granite? That has nothing to do with how I interact with people. I mean I just, I do start etching it in granite. And I mean and people like it sometimes. I mean, people like it when you know exactly what they said and when they said it, or have a very – have at least an above average memory for what’s taken place in the past. Not many people do that. But now that I think about it, I have actually no other mode of operating. I don’t have a light and fluffy mode, you know. It’s like the dryer, you know. It’s always heavy (laughs) heavy cotton. I like this. This is an insight. It’s always heavy. I don’t have a sort of a, I mean, Jesus, I feel like I walk through the day and it’s like some sort of Russian novel, you know. It’s just heavy and there’s always 15 centuries behind it. And it’s always filled with death and darkness. And, you know, I mean, and even, I mean when I play it up light, it’s always so f***ing calculated, you know.



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2. Therapist: Calculate is a good word. 3. Patient: Yeah, sure. 4. Therapist: It’d be nice if you could map out your relationships on your Palm Pilot.

The patient first describes his strong tendency to remember details from his social interactions as “etching stuff ” on granite, emphasising the metaphor with his ironic assertion of it being literal (I do start etching it in granite). The target topic then shifts from his social disposition to his personality in general. He describes himself as a “dryer” with “no other mode of operating” except being “always heavy”. Immediately after musing upon the expression “heavy cotton”, humorously uttered to extend the dryer metaphor, he switches the target topic again to his general daily well-being. He describes how his days feel like “some sort of Russian novel” with “15 centuries behind it”, “filled with death and darkness”, concluding with how his attempts at “playing up light” always seem “calculated”. One gets an impression that this amalgam of different sources and targets is tantamount to, as the patient himself admits elsewhere, “rambling”. Another co-textual hint that the patient is struggling to express himself lies in the repeated use of I mean and you know, which indicate constant adjustments and appeals for the therapist to derive his own inferences from what he is saying (Fox Tree & Schrock, 2002) (see Chapter 7). While rambling is not inherently problematic, and perhaps even to be expected from some patients, its manifestation in the form of an unprincipled switch between sources and targets undermines any ostensibly strategic dimension to this sub-category of variability. Let us temporarily leave behind the therapist’s response to consider another example. The patient in this extract is troubled by financial difficulties, as well as problems in his relationship with his girlfriend, Jessica (Line 4). He describes this series of difficulties as “a vicious little circle that keeps getting tighter” (Line 1). 1. Patient: … And I’ll lay there and start worrying about the bills, or about all the bad checks that are bouncing in and out of the bank like rubber balls, and I start getting scared. And then I start getting worried about being scared, and then I start thinking, “We’ll you’re really blowing it now,” and it just kind of winds up in a vicious little circle that keeps getting tighter. And I’ll get up two or three times during the night. I’ll go over to John’s sometimes. I went over there last night, I got so tight. I’ll go watch TV for a few hours, come back down. It’s usually three or four in the morning before I finally just pass out, and then get up and hour and a half later. 2. Therapist: It sounds like you feel pursued by things. 3. Patient: Oh, God. Yeah, well. It’s like I’m submerged in them. It’s kind of like I’ve been chasing my – it’s like when you see a cat chase its tail around.

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It’s kind of like me trying to get rid of my troubles by catching my tail. Which is what the job kind of meant to me. It’s like here I go on another little circle that’s gonna end up right back in the position that I started in. Strange, I don’t feel bad now. I’ve been really super busy active since I got home, and I did get some mail today, which helped a little. But I found that it’s my tax forms and… oh gee, that’s not gonna help either ‘cause I know I’ve got about 300 dollars in taxes coming up. So at least I can put that all kind of (inaudible) procrastination. But I’m in another position where I have to wait to see how things turn out. 4. Therapist: Is that the goal? These things that you’ve mentioned, they all kind of have that sense. But you have to wait for Jessica to respond, and you’ve got to wait for your check, and you’ve got to wait, I guess, to see what these checks that are bouncing are gonna do. So there isn’t any breakout or any light coming through.

The therapist suggests a different source concept of “pursuit” (Line 2), which more clearly illustrates the metaphoric relationship between the patient and his troubles, in that it specifically construes the patient as being pursued, and his troubles as the pursuer. The patient responds by introducing a series of source concepts to elaborate this relationship (Line 3). He first introduces the different notion of being “submerged” in his troubles, and then describes himself as a cat chasing its own tail in circles. Although there is a clear aspect of consistency in the continued deployment of the concept of pursuit and circularity, there is a noteworthy reversal of semantic roles in terms of who/what the pursuer is, and who/what gets pursued. By describing himself as chasing his troubles, he deviates from the therapist’s suggested scenario of him being chased, thus generating a different set of inferences altogether. Then, towards the end of Line 3, he intimates that he is in yet “another position”, suggesting a parallel but unelaborated argument relating to a different set of circumstances, one in which he has to “wait” instead of taking action. Putting aside the therapist’s response again for the time being, this extract illustrates not so much the inconsistency of sources and targets within a unit of discourse, but an inconsistency in the pursuit of the inferential logic of a single source. As with the previous extract, it is less easy to imagine how these examples cast a strategic perspective on variability. We are again reminded of McMullen’s (1996: 252) characterisation of psychotherapeutic talk as a spontaneous and emotionally charged “struggle to find words”, which might lead us to expect numerous cases where speakers fail to perfectly delineate source and target boundaries, or consistently follow the inherent logic of source concepts. The way I would like to approach the strategic aspect for this sub-category of variability is therefore to discuss how the therapists in these examples have chosen to respond.



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Returning to the first extract, we observe the therapist exercising some selective emphasis. By commenting that “calculate is a good word” (Line 2) and “it’d be nice if you could map out your relationships on your Palm Pilot” (Line 4) while not commenting on the other metaphors, the therapist implies his wish to focus on just that aspect; i.e. the excessive systematicity with which his patient handles relationships. In the second extract, the therapist does not specifically pick up any of the patient’s previous metaphors in his response. Instead, he offers a new summarising metaphor (so there isn’t any breakout or light coming through [Line 4]) which in some respect condenses the previous inconsistencies, and provides a new starting point for further conceptualisation, or transition to a new conversational topic altogether (Drew & Holt, 1998). We might conclude that inconsistent source and target switching, while hardly ‘strategic’ in its own right, nonetheless reflects a not uncommon psychotherapeutic condition which therapists need to strategically manage. As the present discussion is limited to the switching of sources and targets by patients, it would be interesting for future work to explore circumstances under which therapists themselves use metaphors in the ways described by this sub-category of variability. 5.4 The prescriptive aim: Towards a consideration of the therapeutic functions of metaphor variability The following table summarises the four categories of metaphoric consistency and variability, their characteristics in psychotherapeutic talk, and the therapeutic functions they are involved with as seen from the examples in this chapter. Both the examples and the categories are meant to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. The short extracts analysed here provide a glimpse of the ideational and interpersonal dynamics of psychotherapeutic talk which shape the characteristics of metaphors deployed therein. The proposed categories are also maximally schematic in order to highlight patterns of productive metaphor use different than those which tend to be highlighted in the therapeutic literature. Future research could uncover more intricate patterns of metaphoric variability, with a continued emphasis on the therapeutic contexts in with they are situated, and how varying conceptualisations are used as a resource in the interactional process of meaning negotiation and construction in therapeutic dialogue. While this chapter has not been concerned with the quantitative dimension of consistency and variability, questions such as the relative frequency of occurrence of each category, or whether therapists or patients tend to exhibit greater consistency/variability, are all worthy of further exploration.

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Table 6.  Metaphoric consistency and variability in psychotherapeutic talk Categories

Characteristics

Consistency: Co-elaboration of inferences Pursuit of an inherent in metaphors established introduced source- in the discourse target association

Therapeutic functions Facilitates meaning conjunction and shared understanding

Variability: Same source applied to different targets

An established source concept, Creates associations between previously used to describe a target, distinct targets; allows minimally gets applied to a new target disruptive topic transitions

Variability: Same target with different sources applied

An established target topic, previously described by a source concept, is further described by new source(s)

Variability: Different sources and targets Switching between successively introduced into different sources the discourse and targets

Enriches understanding with alternative or complementary conceptualisations; modifies previously raised points May reflect difficulties in expression, especially on patients’ part. Requires strategic management by therapists.

How, then, can the present analysis be meaningfully translated into recommendations for psychotherapeutic practice? As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, the observation of metaphor variability should be considered a counterpoint against existing literature which tends to emphasise, idealise, and develop the premise of metaphoric consistency. It is on the one hand true that consistently developing a metaphor helps develop shared understanding, and is a technique aligned with cognitivist theories of metaphor upon which many psychotherapy works on metaphor are grounded. On the other hand, however, the discursive dynamics which underlie therapeutic interaction often compel some degree of metaphor variability, and this co-occurs with significant therapeutic moves such as to take up, modify, challenge, or enrich the prevailing metaphoric conceptualisations in a manner which seems no less collaborative or ‘shared’. The main prescriptive point for therapists would therefore be that, while metaphor consistency is rightly associated with meaning conjunction, metaphor variability in contrast hardly needs to be associated with meaning disjunction. Once this premise is accepted, the specific categories of metaphoric variability illustrated in this chapter should provide therapists with a useful handle to identify, classify, and subsequently develop the strategic potential inherent in the use of different sources and targets, both by their patients and themselves. It should also be observed that the picture of metaphor flexibility sketched in this chapter provides a useful contrast and complementation to Chapters 3 and 4, respectively. While Chapter 3 highlighted



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the therapeutic value of consistently developing a stable problem-solution framework, Chapter 4 and the present chapter demonstrate how the therapeutic potential of metaphor can also lie in its dynamicity and multiplicity. I finish by reiterating some thoughts about the relationship between metaphoric variability as discussed here, and the concept of metaphoric variation discussed both in the next chapter and elsewhere (e.g. Kövecses, 2005). Variation, defined against ‘universality’, is to my understanding concerned with how metaphoric thought and linguistic patterns of particular cultures and speech communities vary with respect to what cognitivists posit to be inherently ‘embodied’ and therefore universal metaphoric patterns. Variability, on the other hand, is not so much a divergence from these ostensibly universal patterns, but a divergence from metaphors already established in the discourse which is often triggered by situated discursive needs. Chapter 6 will complement the present chapter by investigating variation in how the therapeutic process is itself metaphorically conceptualised as a journey across different levels of the therapeutic discourse community (e.g. theorists and researchers vs. therapists and patients). 5.5 Summary This chapter examined several circumstances in therapy which prompt speakers to pursue the inferential logic of introduced metaphors, or vary one or more metaphoric components as a means to accomplish particular discourse objectives. The contribution this chapter makes to the descriptive aim of the book lies in its documentation of the flexibility of metaphor deployment in psychotherapy, with regard to the variable use of source and/or target concepts as a resource for meaning negotiation and construction. This echoes the discussion in Chapter 4 of the dynamic construction of source-target relationships, while providing a useful contrast with Chapter 3, which illustrated the therapeutic utility of a protracted and vividly elaborated metaphoric scenario across several therapy sessions. The prescriptive aim of this chapter is in turned based on the observation that both metaphor consistency and variability are potentially strategic. This is a particularly important point to be made against the backdrop of existing literature which has tended to model therapy techniques based on the idealisation of metaphoric consistency only. A schematic awareness of the different patterns of interplay between metaphor sources and targets, as provided in this chapter, would thus allow therapists to have a more discursively realistic understanding of how metaphors are likely to be actually used, both by their patients and themselves.

chapter 6

From therapeutic discourse to the discourse of therapy therapy is a journey as a discourse metaphor* 6.1 Introduction Up to this point, I have been analysing metaphors deployed and developed to conceptualise and communicate issues arising in the course of therapy, paying special attention to how the characteristics of these metaphors inform theoretical aspects of metaphor study. Chapter 3 dealt with the functional complementarity of different ideational resources recruited for metaphor construction, Chapter 4 suggested how the rhetorical extension of metaphors can be captured with the notion of metaphor types, while Chapter 5 explored the variability of metaphor use from the perspective of specific therapeutic goals. These findings cover considerable ground in documenting the situated and opportunistic use of metaphors as a feature of psychotherapeutic discourse. However, they do not exhaust the description of ways in which metaphoric and therapeutic processes interact. An important dimension of metaphoric construal not discussed so far, which requires a shift of focus from therapeutic discourse to the Discourse(s) of therapy1, involves the use of conceptual metaphors as key heuristic frames to conceptualise aspects of the nature of therapy itself. This takes us from considering particularistic metaphors used in therapy, to metaphors of therapy. Metaphors of therapy refer to the use of metaphor to conceptualise any aspect of therapy. They exist across a spectrum of specificity, from unique theories and concepts within particular schools of thought, to broader philosophical statements about therapy which may apply across schools. As an example of a metaphoric concept specific to a particular school, consider how the notion of

* Some parts of this chapter have been published as therapy is a journey as a discourse metaphor in Discourse Studies (Tay, 2011b). 1. Gee (2005: 26) distinguishes discourse with a small “d” from Discourse with a capital “D”. The former refers to actual stretches of language-in-use, while the later refers to “socially accepted associations among ways of using language, of thinking, valuing, acting, and interacting”. Both levels are relevant for the present purpose.

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‘awareness’ is conceptualised in Gestalt therapy. In what is widely recognised as its seminal texts, Perls, Hefferline and Goodman describe awareness as “the glow of a coal, which comes from its own combustion” (1989[1951]: 75), and Perls (1969) explains how awareness should be metaphorically conceptualised as having inner, outer, and middle “zones”. Consequently, an important component of Gestalt therapy is for therapists and patients to understand and manage these zones in specific ways. This chapter presents a case study of a more general metaphor of therapy – the frequently used heuristic frame of therapy as a journey (cf. Semino, 2008: 183) – with a focus on its deployment in the discourse of Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT is a highly influential school of thought within the broader class of cognitive approaches,2 with considerable evidence supporting its effectiveness for a range of psychological disorders (Butler, Chapman, Forman, & A. Beck, 2006). Broadly characterised, CBT therapists attempt to modify patterns of fallacious thinking, or ‘dysfunctional schemata’, theorised to underlie dysfunctional social behaviour and other forms of psychological disturbances (A. Beck, 1964, 1976). The standard approach of CBT therapists is to highlight the logical flaws inherent in patients’ negative thoughts, point out more positive or logical explanations for patients’ issues, and encourage them to translate these into more adaptive, practical action. Due to CBT’s collaborative and goal-driven philosophy, (J. Beck, 1995; Rosenbaum & Ronen, 1998), the inferentially rich journey metaphor (Lakoff, 1993) has often been recruited as a key component of what might be described as an idealised cognitive model (ICM) (Lakoff, 1987) of the therapeutic process. In this ICM, psychotherapy is construed as a journey. Therapists are guides who help patients select the appropriate destination and overcome obstacles, but the road to recovery (Greenberger & Padesky, 1995) must ultimately be traversed by patients themselves. Though the ICM is frequently instantiated through journey metaphors at the levels of therapeutic theorisation and pedagogy, its potential instantiations at the level of actual therapeutic talk, which could offer insights into how clinical realities square with ‘idealised models’, are seldom discussed. Of primary interest is whether and how this conceptualisation is drawn upon when participants evaluate the ongoing therapeutic process. I first identify four levels at which the therapy is a journey metaphor is motivated or specified, ranging from the broadest cognitive underpinnings of the journey frame to its increasing contextualisation in therapeutic discourse. Based 2. Another influential, cognitively oriented school of thought is Brief Relational Therapy (BRT) (Safran, 2002). Both BRT and CBT strongly emphasise a collaborative relationship, and share many similar theoretical principles (Safran & Segal, 1996).



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on sample materials which represent each level, I compare how the metaphor is instantiated, with particular attention on how details pertaining to the source and target domains, as well as the mappings, turn out to be similar or different across the levels. My specific focus for the level of actual therapeutic talk (level 4) will be to show how clinical reality can diverge from the abstract idealisations envisioned in the journey ICM, and how this is reflected in the specific instantiations of journey metaphors by therapists and patients. I then show how such an intertextual investigation tracing the varied application of a singular heuristic frame can offer insights relevant to both the descriptive and prescriptive aim of this book. For the former, my analysis addresses several issues of concern to metaphor researchers, including the cross-contextual resonances of a discourse metaphor (Zinken et al., 2008) like therapy is a journey, as well as the closely related notion of metaphor variation (Kövecses, 2005, 2010a) within a complex, multi-levelled discourse domain like psychotherapy. For the latter, I suggest how the present discourse analytic approach can contribute to emerging research on feedback across different participatory levels in psychotherapy, especially that of in situ feedback within actual therapeutic sessions (Claiborn & Goodyear, 2005; Lambert, 2005). 6.2 Motivation and specification of therapy is a journey at four levels The therapy is a journey metaphor is derived from, or instantiated at the following levels: 1. The primary and conceptual metaphoric level; e.g. life is a journey. 2. The level of CBT theorisation, where ‘journeys’ surfaces as a potential heuristic frame. 3. The level of specific therapist training models, where the theme of therapy as journey is explicitly developed. 4. The level of actual therapeutic talk, where therapists and patients discuss their expectations, perceptions etc. of the therapeutic journey. Moving from 1 to 4, each level represents a further specification of the journey construal, as increasingly specific circumstances and conceptualisations become relevant. At the topmost level, primary and conceptual metaphors such as purposes are destinations, difficulties are impediments, and life is a journey (Grady, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) are posited to provide a near-universal, nonsituated motivation for conceptualising the attainment of an objective as reaching a physical destination. Although this can plausibly explain why instantiations

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of therapy is a journey retain a broad (and important) semblance of constancy across different purposive levels of psychotherapeutic discourse, closer empirical scrutiny is required to explain how and why the instantiations nonetheless vary. Theorists, educators, therapists, and patients can all wield their competence with the metaphor differently, and sometimes subtly, to achieve specific discourse objectives not easily captured by the Lakovian perspective. Levels 2 to 4 describe the different purposive levels. We may imagine them as forming parts of a theorisation – pedagogy – therapist-patient talk chain, across which core therapeutic conceptualisations should resonate. Level 2 represents the collective theorisation of basic CBT principles, where the journey metaphor presents itself as a potential framing device to express principles pertaining to the therapeutic process, especially in the context of collaborating with patients. Level 3 represents a further contextualising, or perspectivising step in the form of therapist training materials which explicitly draw upon the journey metaphor as an expedient means to illustrate and impart idealised ways of relating with patients, while level 4 brings us to the frontline of therapeutic action and reveals how the metaphor is adopted and/or modified as therapists and patients discuss their situation-specific perceptions of the therapeutic journey. 6.2.1 Level 1: The primary and conceptual metaphoric level Cognitivists have argued that correspondences between sensorimotor experiences and subjective judgements, which form primary metaphors (Grady, 1997), motivate our diverse inventory of conceptual metaphors (see Section  2.3.1). Prominent examples include the highly productive primary metaphors purposes are destinations and difficulties are impediments (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999: 60–73). As these primary metaphors are conceptually elaborated with more specific cultural knowledge, complex conceptual metaphors such as life is a journey (Lakoff, 1993) are developed, which sanction linguistic expressions like the following She has reached her goals, and has overcome many obstacles while doing so. While at the beginning it was all about taking baby steps, she met helpful companions along the way who showed her the right direction and accelerated her progress.

These examples both suggest and instantiate the claim that we talk and reason about our progress through life in terms of completing a physical journey. However, the aforementioned primary metaphors can also in principle sanction the conceptualisation of any abstract undertaking in terms of any form of journey



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(i.e. purposeful activities are journeys), regardless of how these are substantively and situationally elaborated. ‘Love’ as an undertaking can for example be construed in terms of a cruise along a highway, or indeed a “voyage to the bottom of the sea” (Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999). The journey metaphor appears to be particularly suitable when the conceptualised undertaking highlights aspects such as stepwise procedures and routine difficulties, as is the case for therapeutic activity in general. While the journey metaphor is, at this generic level, cognitively natural as a heuristic resource for conceptualising therapy, it is subject to further specification at the ‘lower’ and more situationally specific levels of therapeutic discourse, as we will see below. 6.2.2 Level 2: Theorisation Drawing from the theoretical principles of various ‘sub schools’, Rosenbaum and Ronen (1998) summarised what they consider to be seven major features which define the common ground in cognitive approaches to therapy: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Therapy as a Meaning-Making Process Systematic and Goal-Directed Therapy Practicing and Experiencing Therapy (and supervision) as a Collaborative Effort Person-Focused Therapy The Therapist (or supervisor)3 as the Facilitator of Change The Ultimate Goal: Empowerment and Resourcefulness.

In short, therapy works by instilling positive meaning systems (cognitions, behaviours and emotions) [1]. This process is systematic and goal-directed in that diagnoses and treatments are outlined in a stepwise fashion, involving clear starting, intermediate, and end points [2]. Treatments go beyond conversation and involve practicing and experiencing both within and outside the clinic [3]. As effort is required on patients’ part, the therapeutic process is collaborative. Participants need to jointly define, execute and evaluate problems and solutions [4]. Emphasis is placed on appreciating the ‘personhood’ of patients and incorporating treatment into their daily lives, rather than assigning problems to depersonalised diagnostic categories [5]. Because cognitive approaches are goal-directed and oriented towards the holistic lives of patients, therapists are responsible for influencing and 3. Rosenbaum and Ronen’s article was intended to show how these features characterise not only therapist-patient interaction, but that between therapists and their supervisors as well. The inclusion of ‘supervision’ and ‘supervisor’ in points 4 and 6 indicate this.

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motivating them [6]. The ultimate objective is to guide patients towards self-change by making therapeutic strategies transparent and increasing patients’ confidence in their own abilities [7]. The potential relevance of journey metaphors of therapy is discernible from these features. Particularly, the goal-directed and collaborative character of therapy [2 and 4], the holistic nature of therapists’ guidance [5 and 6], and the envisioning of an ultimate goal [7] form a cluster of interrelated concepts suitable for conceptualisation and elaboration with the metaphor of a journey. Clearly defined starting, intermediate, and end points in therapy map onto physical points along a path, while a collaborative relationship maps onto conventional expectations regarding ideal travel companions. Nevertheless, it appears that research in therapeutic theories tends to eschew rather than embrace metaphors, and this might be reflective of the conventions of quantitatively oriented studies. For instance, a random sample of 100 articles from the PubMed4 database retrieved with the search term ‘cognitive behaviour therapy’ yielded only five examples where metaphors are used in the titles. The collaborative aspect of CBT has also often remained implicit as many theorists have focused on proposing diagnostic and solution models for specific symptoms, rather than conceptualising the therapeutic process in general (Caballo, 1998). In recent years, however, the collaborative aspect has come under renewed emphasis (Leahy, 2008), based on the view that therapists are as vulnerable to difficulties as patients during the therapeutic process. Journey-related lexis and inferential patterns are more frequently instantiated as part of CBT discourse, and the journey metaphor has become more than a latent framing device. Leahy (2003, 2008), for example, has made extensive use of terms such as roadblocks, obstacles and impasses in his theorisation of the major difficulties encountered in CBT practice, which participants must collaboratively solve. In an edited volume titled Roadblocks in CognitiveBehavioural Therapy (Leahy, 2003), contributing authors discuss different types of challenges encountered across a range of disorders (e.g. anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, psychosis), patient populations (e.g. individuals, couples, families), and therapeutic processes (e.g. therapy-interfering behaviours, emotional avoidance). Despite their differing nature and implications, these challenges are commonly conceptualised as roadblocks along the journey of therapy. These examples affirm the broad theoretical import of journey-related lexis in CBT. In summary, assumptions about the stepwise and collaborative nature of cognitive approaches invite theorists to capitalise on the inferential possibilities 4. PubMed is a free online database which indexes research in the health sciences (http://www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/).



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presented by the journey metaphor. Evidence of this can be gleaned from the use of journey-related terminology in CBT theorisation. We will observe more elaborate and varying deployment of therapy is a journey at the next level of therapist training models. 6.2.3 Level 3: Therapist training models: The river and the road journey While most cognitive therapists might indeed subscribe to a common outline of basic principles, divergences appear when these principles function as a background against which more perspectivised models are formulated. There are many conceivable ways to modify elements in the journey metaphor, including the nature of the path undertaken, the obstacles encountered, and the presence or absence of a fellow traveller. For example, Stott et al. (2010: 63–65) provide both verbal and pictorial descriptions of how the therapeutic journey can be conceptualised as climbing a mountain. In the context of training therapists, one source of variation in the journey metaphor stems from how the collaborative relationship could be differently construed from either the patient’s or therapist’s point of view. Some training models might also be more specific about how different obstacles encountered in therapy require different types of solutions. These models are therefore not usually concerned with elaborating therapy as a journey per se, but may instead presuppose, or modify such a construal for particular instructional purposes. Furthermore, because the objective is to explicate concepts in a systematic manner, another point of variation is that the metaphors tend to be developed into sophisticated analogies with elaborate source domain scenarios (Semino, 2008; Wee, 2005b). The scope of variation permitted by a schematic conceptual metaphor thus allows different theorists, who nonetheless fall within a common theoretical group, to exemplify “both knowledge of unity and of differentiation” (Argaman, 2008: 497). I provide a case study of two training models: Aronov and Brodsky’s (2009) River Model, which likens the therapeutic process to a canoeing trip, and Ronen and Rosenbaum’s (1998) Road Journey Model, which exploits the source domain of a road trip instead. Both models utilise journey metaphors as a framing device, but differ in their focus and objective. While Aronov and Brodsky emphasise differences between therapeutic difficulties which necessitate different courses of action on therapists’ part, Rosenbaum and Ronen adopt a more therapist-centric stance in advising how therapists ought to handle exceptionally difficult patients. These differing objectives motivate the observable variations in metaphor use.

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The river model: Therapist and patient on a river trip Aronov and Brodsky (2009: 188) offered a precise statement of what their river model is, and is not: The River Model is not a treatment approach, and not a clinical case conceptualization; it does not ask therapists to abandon the tools and theoretical orientations they bring to the process. Instead, The River provides a conceptual metaphor (the Canoe Guide and Client on a River Trip) for teaching the elements of timing and of level of intervention. This model seeks to teach timing to beginning therapists. It is a framework for understanding how much or how little the therapist should do at given points in the therapeutic process and when and how much to steer or to wait.

This excerpt makes it clear that the model does not seek to replace theoretical principles formulated at level 2, but is instead aimed specifically at imparting “the elements of timing and of level of intervention” to novice therapists. Aronov and Brodsky claim that while existing instructional materials impart the techniques used to overcome therapeutic difficulties, they fail to impart the nuanced knowledge of when and to what extent they should be used (2009: 188). An examination of the prototypical mappings constituting the therapy is a journey metaphor likewise reveals that there are no conventionally available source domain entities and relations to capture such nuanced knowledge (i.e. information about when/ how particular techniques should be used to overcome particular obstacles). This under-specification motivates the elaboration of therapy is a journey into a more substantive analogy, comprised of richer mappings. In particular, the objective of capturing the aforementioned nuanced knowledge is achieved by associating different therapeutic difficulties with different hazards along a river, and different techniques with different canoeing equipment. The aim, specifications, and mappings of the river model are summarised in Table 7 below. As we can observe, the creative expansion of the ‘equipment’ and ‘hazards’ components of the source domain provides the inferential richness required in the target. The wedge in particular with its known multi-functionality and requirements of precise use maps productively onto the precise ways in which therapists ought to intervene. The many hazards, differing widely in nature and severity, map onto the correspondingly diverse range of therapeutic difficulties. Moreover, the fact that one can “bump into a rock, and slide off in a beneficial direction”, and that “whirlpools spin you round-and-round, but also let you notice patterns” (2009: 192) translates into the inference that difficulties can sometimes aid the therapeutic process, about which therapists need to develop an awareness. ‘Islands’ and ‘side trips’ furthermore map onto the target domain notion of important resting points in therapy.



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Table 7.  The river model (summarised from Aronov & Brodsky, 2009) the river model the canoe guide and client on a river trip Aim of model: To provide a “framework of decision rules for how much to say or do and when to say or do it” (Aronov and Brodsky, 2009: 194). Specification of journey metaphor: Elaborates individual equipment, hazards, and key points along journey, which illustrate the need for different degrees and timings of therapeutic intervention. Shared canoe emphasises the collaborative nature of therapy. Source (river trip)

Target (therapy)

equipment – Lifejacket (for both guide and learner) – Map – Wedge – Shovel

resources/techniques – Emergency backup plan for patient, referral plan for therapist – Discoveries and insights into issues – To “direct, divert, block, or split” therapeutic talk – To “dig deeper” into issues

topography (hazards) – Bombs – Need for sandbags – Rocks, rapids, whirlpools – Fog banks

difficulties – Suicidality, violence, serious misconduct, intrusive sexual feelings etc. – Slowing down of momentum in therapy – Minor problems, unproductive repetitions – Therapist and/or patient losing track

key points along journey – Side trips – Islands

key therapy moments – Attention to peripheral issues – Potential resting points

guide-learner dynamics – Guide lets learner choose destination and purpose – Guide lets learner learn how to draw the map – Guide must like learner, but not overly – Guide must ensure both are fit for the journey

therapist-patient dynamics – Therapist consults patient on therapeutic goals – Therapist lets learner acquire ­self-help skills – Therapist must have appropriate level of affection for patient – Therapist must ensure both can handle the demands of therapy

Alongside these innovations are the more conventional correspondences such as those between starting points/commencement and destinations/completion of therapy, and those between ‘guide-learner dynamics’ and ‘therapist-patient dynamics’. These mappings preserve the basic CBT principles of therapist-patient collaboration and patient empowerment. As we will see in the second model, however, the schematic therapeutic journey can also be construed as a solo one when the model is designed from a therapist-centric point of view, resulting in some modification of the idealised discourse metaphor.

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The road journey model: Therapy is a (therapist’s) road journey The road journey model was developed in the context of therapist supervision, where novice therapists receive feedback and corrective instruction from their supervisors, and in a sense become ‘patients’ themselves. While it appropriates the discourse metaphor of therapy is a journey and expectedly shares many commonalities, the avowed emphasis on solving the therapist’s, rather than the patient’s problems motivates some modification to the conventional mappings therein. Akin to the river model, a closer examination of the mappings will reveal its points of constancy and variation with respect to the overarching discourse metaphor. A summary of the road journey model is provided in Table 8 below. Table 8.  The road journey model (summarised from Ronen & Rosenbaum, 1998) the road journey model therapy is a (therapist’s) road journey Aim of model: To “enhance the therapist’s understanding, feeling, and/or coping with a situation in therapy” (Ronen and Rosenbaum, 1998: 17). Modification of journey metaphor: A solo journey without fellow traveller(s). All details of the journey to be decided by the solo traveller. A therapist-centered metaphor, implying that sessions ought to be primarily planned by therapist, and that patients are potentially ‘hazards’. Source (road journey)

Target (therapy)

key points along journey – Starting point and destination (to be determined by driver)

key therapy moments – Commencement and objectives of therapy (to be determined by therapist)

hazards – Dangerous road conditions (curving streets, cars coming ahead, railroad tracks etc.)

difficulties – ‘Difficult’ patients (e.g. professionals, former therapists) and difficult moments in therapy

tools/coping mechanisms for journey – Regulate speed of driving – Obey traffic laws – Map – Warning signals and street signs

tools/coping mechanisms for therapy – Change tempo of therapy – Obey basic principles – Concrete plan – Symptoms from patients

The most significant modification observable in this model is that, instead of being construed as travelling companions, therapists now assume full control of the solo journey, while patients (especially ‘difficult’ ones) are construed as potential hazards. Other conventional correspondences (e.g. starting points/commencement and destinations/completion of therapy) remain similar to the river model, and the schematic characterisation of therapy as a journey. The collaborative philosophy of



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CBT has thus been de-emphasised in this model, relative to the pedagogic point of enhancing novice therapists’ ability to cope with difficult situations. Crucially, however, the customisable nature of the journey frame allows exponents of the model to conceptualise and express theoretical divergences while remaining within CBT boundaries. I have thus far shown that a cognitively natural metaphor like purposeful activities are journeys can be argued to provide meaning stability and a sense of meta-theoretical coherence, even as specific variations need to be accounted for by examining their situated contexts of deployment. Nonetheless, the levels discussed so far (CBT theorisation and therapist training models) are still some distance away from the frontlines of the actual psychotherapy session. Consider the following memorable quote by David Elkins, a psychologist known for criticising dogmatic adherence to theory in favour of greater sensitivity to the contextspecific nature of therapist-patient interaction (Elkins, 2009). More interesting for our purpose, and as an apt preview to the upcoming section, notice how Elkins likewise construes therapists and patients as travelling companions, with the important caveat that they are of equal status – no one is really explicitly guiding the other. If you ask me for a theory, I will tell you to build one from the lumber of your own heart. And if you ask me for techniques, I will ask you to know your own soul. And if you ask me how this will help your client, I will tell you that the client too – whether you recognise it or not – is on the same journey as you.

Elkins’ quote reveals one important perceived difference between theory (levels 2 and 3) and practice (level 4) which explains his take on the journey metaphor – that therapists really need to rely on their instincts, experiences, and regard patients as equal in a profound sense etc. Another important difference inherent in the level of actual therapeutic talk is that patients’ conceptualisations become salient alongside idealised constructs which therapists might have. While we do not expect patients to speak of therapeutic theories (levels 2 and 3) on their own initiative, we can expect them to respond to metaphors used by therapists, as well as draw upon the cognitive naturalness of the journey metaphor (level 1) when conceptualising and communicating their experience about therapy. It is thus important to analyse the situated use of metaphors when talking about therapy, to shed light on how theoretical idealisations square with clinical realities, once ‘live’ interpersonal dynamics enter the picture (Cameron, 2008).

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6.2.4 Level 4: Actual therapeutic talk Metaphors used during actual sessions often reveal the candid perceptions of therapists and patients. Of particular interest are cases of negative feedback which trigger extended discussion. An examination of how journey metaphors5 are ­negotiated to arrive at a mutual and often affect laden understanding (Cameron, 2007b) about the progress of therapy will show the degree of constancy and/or variation between theoretical idealisations and the reality of specific therapeutic circumstances. For instance, alignment with theoretical constructs is evident when therapists use journey-motivated terminology formulated at the higher levels of therapeutic theorisation (e.g. impasse), while varying metaphoric elements (i.e. source and/or target entities, mappings) reflect less theoretically circumscribable phenomena, such as individual communicative styles (Kövecses, 2005), and crises in the therapeutic relationship. Variation from conventional metaphoric correspondences is furthermore to be expected, as Cameron (2007a, b) aptly reminds us that thematically linked metaphoric expressions in discourse may indeed be connected to decontextualised conceptual metaphors (level 1), but should ultimately be seen as grounded within the immediate discourse event. Although manual identification of metaphors remains the preferred methodological approach (Pragglejaz Group, 2007), my singular focus on the journey metaphor and awareness of journey-related lexis from the previous levels facilitates a complementary computer aided corpus search. Concordances involving core journey-related lexis, or ‘metaphor keys’ (Charteris-Black, 2004), such as path, obstacle, destination (Level 1), and more specific terms such as impasse, guide, map (Levels 2 and 3) can be generated. The results and surrounding co-text can then be manually examined for metaphors, with particular attention on extended stretches of talk developing journeying as a systematic metaphor for the ongoing therapy. Searching the corpus both manually and electronically ensures that the criterion of extended metaphoricity is met, and minimises the likelihood for interesting examples to be missed. Among the examples thus uncovered, two therapist-patient pairs stood out for their extended cross-session discussions on the ongoing therapeutic dynamics. They illustrate how conceptual metaphors can reflect a broad alignment with theoretical idealisations about a ‘collaborative relationship’, while at the same time 5. Besides journey metaphors, other less common metaphors found in my corpus include therapy is war (Let’s not talk about the war we are having in here then) and therapy is reflecting each other (Do you want to reflect me, for a few minutes?). While the former is unlikely to be promoted as a heuristic frame, the latter idea of ‘reflection’ does figure in Gestalt therapy (Andersen, 1991), and would make for an interesting case study.



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highlight individual circumstances which deviate from them. Although examples of therapeutic talk which conform to the idealised mappings envisioned at the previous levels do exist, the focus of this chapter makes cases of divergence more analytically relevant. I now discuss each pair in turn.

Therapist-patient pair 1 The first therapist-patient pair has been experiencing significant difficulties with the therapeutic relationship throughout their sessions together. Prior to these extracts they had spent some time discussing what they felt might have caused the difficulties. The patient feels that the therapist constantly switches topics just as he is on the verge of gaining insights about his own condition, while the therapist feels that the patient probes unnecessarily into the motivations behind his questions. Another difficulty faced by the therapist and annotated in the transcripts is that the patient tends to “use smiling, laughter and joking as a defence mechanism to shut things off ”. The following four extracts illustrate how therapist and patient use “impasse” to describe their predicament. While the therapist’s use of terminology demonstrates the instantiation of a level 2 (theorisation) construal at the level of therapeutic talk, and implies the conventional conceptualisation of therapy as a journey, the present situation where therapist and patient are unable to agree upon a common agenda (i.e. a common path, or destination) motivates a departure from its prototypical mappings.

(1) 1. Therapist: So you seem to be – do you get the feeling that we both feel kind of stuck. 2. Patient: Well I don’t know about you, but I do. 3. Therapist: Uh huh. I do too. I think it would be fair to say that in some ways we are at impasse. 4. Patient: (laughing) yeah.

(2) 1. Therapist: It is often when you giggle. Yes. And it’s tough. Because you are saying look at this, and I am saying look at this. 2. Patient: (laughing) you are probably right. I appreciate it. You probably right. What? 3. Therapist: Would you say that is a fair characterization of the impasse that we are in? 4. Patient: I said you are probably right.

(3) 1. Patient: Right. Well, what do you do at impasses anyway? I don’t have a formula for an impasse. I do know that this is I don’t know if it is a problem or not, maybe but it is kind of interesting that you brought up an impasse which is theoretic logic or is a theoretical claim at the same time.

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2. Therapist: I think you are right but you know you are smiling again so I am wondering, are we back at the impasse and you are laughing, but I am wondering if we can stop and find out what that smiling is about. 3. Patient: I don’t know, Jim, this sucks. I don’t know. I have been going all day today, what can I say, this feels like another meeting in some ways. (4)

1. 2. 3. 4.

Therapist: So we are back to the impasse. Patient: Well, it’s a different impasse. Therapist: I don’t think so. Patient: It’s your impasse. You are the one doing the theory now, not me. But maybe we should avoid it.

In Extract 1, both parties agree about being stuck at an “impasse”, unable to proceed further along the therapeutic journey. Extracts 2 and 3 in particular reveal the problematic pursuit of different agendas, which strongly undermine the idealised construct of a common journey. The therapist points out two difficulties in Extract 2 Line 1 – the patient’s incessant giggling, and their inability to focus on a common topic (you are saying look at this, and I am saying look at this), which the patient agrees to be a “fair characterization” of the impasse they are in (Extract 2 Line 3). These difficulties are further manifested in Extract 3, when the therapist calls for yet another stop to “find out what the smiling is about” (Extract 3 Line 2). The patient clearly does not welcome this suggestion (Extract 3 Line 3). Incidentally, the patient’s apparent awareness of the theoretical import of “impasse” (Extract 3 Line 1) (it is kind of interesting that you brought up an impasse which is theoretic logic) also reflects another of the therapist’s concerns; i.e. the unnecessary probes into the therapist’s questions, which is a common deflecting, resisting, or “intellectualising” strategy (Kestenbaum, 1983) used by patients to avoid the subject matter at hand. In the final extract, the perceived misalignment of focus climaxes when the patient denies for the first time that they are facing a common impasse (Extract 4 Line 4). By implying that the therapist is pursuing his own theoretical agenda and facing his own impasse, the patient also implies that the therapeutic process is no longer collaborative. We see how, with “it’s your impasse”, the journey metaphor serves as (i) an evaluative resource for the patient to communicate his negative opinion about the therapeutic process; and (ii) an indicator of what therapists commonly interpret as a problematic display of deflecting, or resisting the therapeutic process.



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Therapist-patient pair 2 The next set of extracts involving the second therapist-patient pair further illustrates how therapy is a journey can be varied in expressing therapeutic circumstances which deviate from theoretical idealisations. Across these stretches of talk, therapy is construed as a journey, while control of the sessions is variously construed as (1) being ahead in the journey, and (2) being the driver and navigator. An observable similarity with the first therapist-patient pair is that the problematic relationship results from the therapist not being able to properly assume the role of a journey guide.

(1) 1. Patient: … And in here that’s helped me, doing that – the difference between what I think is right and what… 2. Therapist: Well how am I helping you? You seem to have a pretty good sense… 3. Patient: In here, but we’ve done this together in here. 4. Therapist: I feel like you’re throwing me a bone now. [No, well you can have a little bit] (ph) 5. Patient: No. (laughs) We’ll be driving along, and you go, “Oh, look at that over there, isn’t that nice?” “Oh, that is nice. I think I will travel over there.” 6. Therapist: I don’t know, I also got the sense, you know, maybe … I’m sure what might have been going on when you said, “Yeah, I know what you’re going to say. I know what you’re going to say,” like, wasn’t sure what that was… 7. Patient: I was trying to stay one step ahead of you. 8. Therapist: Oh, you were? 9. Patient: Well in a sense, yeah. 10. Therapist: Can you tell me a bit about that? 11. Patient: No. (laughs) I can’t! I mean… 12. Therapist: I’m sure you can. 13. Patient: You embarrassed me now. 14. Therapist: Why? What’s the embarrassment? 15. Patient: Oh because it’s that thing about being right and knowing what you’re going to say and [no, I mean I know] (ph) what I’m going to say to seize control. 16. Therapist: No I think you’re trying to stay one step ahead of me here. 17. Patient: Right. That’s what I meant. 18. Therapist: I mean, even now. Are you trying to guess what I’m … 19. Patient: No, not now. But I do like … “Oh, I know what you’re going to say. I’ll show you how smart I am.”

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(2) 1. Therapist: Well, I’m not really trying not to blame you. I’m sensing somehow that we’re not, and since it’s working together, and I’m wondering, you know, or have a sense of – 2. Patient: Chasing the car. 3. Therapist: Yeah. It feels a bit. It feels a bit like – I don’t know who’s chasing who, but I think perhaps I’m chasing you and trying to say “Let’s run together” and feeling like it’s hard right now. 4. Patient: Right.

In Extract 1 Line 1 and Line 3, the patient affirms the therapist for having helped him gain certain insights, and also affirms their seeming collaboration. He describes the therapeutic process as “driving along”, and the therapist as someone who points out the ideal destinations (Extract 1 Line 5). The therapist however disagrees with this evaluation and implies that the affirmation is somewhat patronising (Extract 1 Line 4), because she feels that the patient constantly tries to second-guess what she says (Extract 1 Line 6). The patient then admits to the “embarrassing” (Extract 1 Lines 13–14) fact that he has been trying to “stay one step ahead” (Extract 1 Lines 7 and 16) in the therapeutic journey, which translates to attempting to “seize control” (Extract 1 Line 15) and show the therapist “how smart (he is)” (Extract 1 Line 19). The idea of staying one step ahead continues in Extract 2, where the therapist expresses more explicitly her concerns about an absence of collaboration. Both parties concur that the therapist is “chasing the car” (Extract 2 Line 2), attempting unsuccessfully to get the patient to “run together” (Extract 2 Line 3). Discussions on the issue of control continue in subsequent extracts. Staying with the journey metaphor, the pair introduces and develops the conceptualisation of control as driving and navigating: (3) 1. Therapist: So you always have to have a plan before you come in here? 2. Patient: Yeah. 3. Therapist: That’s just like whatever happens happens. 4. Patient: Tell me how to do that. 5. Therapist: Well, maybe this is a good place to start. 6. Patient: Yeah, I could. I’ll try next week. 7. Therapist: (Chuckling). 8. Patient: Well, I can’t from now; we’re already – we’ve already driven miles already out of our way. 9. Therapist: (Chuckling). Because they keep driving us out of here. 10. Patient: Yeah. 11. Therapist: This week. I’ll be in the back seat.

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12. Patient: 13. Therapist: 14. Patient: 15. Therapist: 16. Patient: 17. Therapist: 18. Patient: 19. Therapist:

Nah, why don’t you drive? Why don’t I drive? Yeah. (Chuckling) no. Your shoe drive.6 Well, I guess I’m driving a bit right now. No, you are. It’s just down a bumpy road, I guess. You don’t like the road I chose?

In Extract 3, the therapist experiments with a different approach to keep the patient’s tendency to seize control in check. She encourages the patient to be more spontaneous and less concerned with having a “plan” before each session (Lines 1, 3, 5), starting from this present “place” (Line 5) on the journey. The patient feels that he is unable to presently do so because they’ve already “driven miles out of (their) way” (Line 8), re-invoking the driving metaphor and possibly implying that the present discussion diverts from the real prescriptive aim. There is insufficient co-textual information to determine what “they” in the therapist’s response in Line 9 refers to. The therapist attempts to suggest again that the patient should practice being spontaneous, offering to stay “in the back seat” (Line 11) and thereby construing control of the session as driving. Interestingly, upon the patient’s refusal and insistence that the therapist should drive and control the session instead (Lines 12, 16), the therapist claims that she is already “driving a bit right now”7, implying that she is still indirectly assuming control with her experimental approach of letting the patient drive. The patient is apparently aware of this experiment and rather cleverly situates it within the overall therapeutic process by construing it as going “down a bumpy road” (Line 18). Similar to the previous therapist-patient pair, as a final testament to the usefulness and relevance of the metaphor, “bumpy road” allows the therapist to understand Line 18 as a negative but indirectly stated evaluation, as seen from her response in Line 19. In the final two extracts, the themes of driving and navigation continue to be developed as metaphorically representing the issue of control. The therapist asserts her theoretically idealised role as the rightful driver, while the patient feels that the ideal therapist is more of a “soundboard”. He also asserts his agency in the therapeutic process, which he construes as “fighting over the wheel”: 6. “Your shoe drive” is quite likely a transcription error for “You should drive”. 7. Akin to the “balloon metaphor” in Section 4.3.1, the incongruous source domain image of “driving a bit” can be analysed within the framework of conceptual blending theory. Here, the target domain notion of assuming indirect control motivates the source domain image of assuming less than full control of the car.

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(4) 1. Patient: Because in the beginning I said, “This is what I want,” and I would say what I want for you to say. “Well, wouldn’t it make sense if you did this or didn’t do this? You’d feel a certain way and you’ve never done that,” which used to piss me off. But now I mean I really learned that it is much better the other way; that I am thinking for myself. You’re kind of a soundboard that keeps me on track, on the road. When I’m jerking off you get me back into the game so… And that’s good but… so I’m trying to learn – so that I like, but then there might be something else. And you’ll say, “Well, maybe you should stay with your feelings here.” Well, maybe those are my feelings, where I’m at now. How do I know? Where do I say, “Well, all right, I’ll go with her, I’ll let her drive now,” as opposed to “Let’s fight over the wheel”? 2. Therapist: But I don’t recall you ever FIGHTING with me over the wheel. 3. Patient: Well, maybe in my head I am. 4. Therapist: Yeah. That’s what’s so difficult for me sometimes I think. So that makes it hard for me to know. “Hey, he just got the wheel. How did he get the wheel? He told that story; that’s how he got the wheel. He distracted me. He said, ‘Look out there’ and grabbed the wheel.” You know, it would be different I think if you kind of just said, “You know what? This is what I’m feeling right now. Then I’d feel – 5. Patient: Well, I guess because there’s truth to it when you’ll go, “Okay, well, what are you avoiding, in essence?” I mean there’s truth to that. Because working in here, I agree that’s something I want to do is be focused on how I’m feeling. And this whole thing with my family not being able to show feelings and… Where I just have to drive over to the scenic outlook and I did talk to my mother.

In Line 1, the patient’s apparent dilemma is conceptualised and elaborated through the driving metaphor established in the previous extract. He prefers to think and therefore ‘drive’ for himself, regarding the therapist as a “soundboard8 that keeps (him) on track, on the road”, rather than someone in an overly prescriptive role. However, he also acknowledges that there are places along the journey (maybe those are my feelings, where I’m at now) where the therapist ought to function more 8. Most senses of ‘soundboard’ (e.g. part of a musical instrument, machine that combines electronic signals, material used for soundproofing) do not appear to bear direct relevance to the domain of driving/journeying. No matter how its relevance is being construed, the patient is doing so with respect to the journey domain, suggesting its function to keep him on track.



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than a soundboard and actually have the wheel. He is uncertain of when he should “go with (the therapist)” and “let (the therapist) drive”, and when he should “fight over the wheel”. The metaphoric image of fighting over the wheel elaborates the conventional correspondence between driving and control of therapy, to suggest that this control can be usurped, either aggressively or in more subtle ways. Both parties agree that the present fight is of the latter type (Lines 2, 3), in which the patient would distract the therapist and “grab the wheel” (Line 4) without the latter’s notice. The therapist feels that such distractions come in the form of the patient not being forthright with his thoughts and feelings. In Line 5, the patient acknowledges his avoidance tendencies, attributes this to his family situation, and construes such avoidance as making detours (drive over to the scenic outlook) from the ultimate therapeutic destination. The final extract further elaborates the metaphoric theme of control in therapy as driving:

(5) 1. Patient: … I am learning in here that if that doesn’t sound right to me, then that is wrong. Let us not go that way. You are going the wrong way from there. But I also know that, yeah, I am influenced, you even said it to me – you reacting this way to me because you think I should go that way. 2. Therapist: You know it is funny because I do think that goes on a bit in here but I feel to work co-operatively – where we are both still driving – is still a little bit more difficult. I will say something that is real important and you will say something, completely… you are on your own track. Our communication is very funny that way. I guess I do sort of wonder. 3. Patient: Well it takes me half of the sessions to get there or whatever. It seems to me that the latter part of our sessions is more truthful. 4. Therapist: How so? 5. Patient: Because it feels like we are going through quicksand at the beginning. 6. Therapist: What about right now? 7. Patient: Right now I feel good – stimulated. It is like we are both not interested in driving. Did you notice?

The first half of Extract 5 instantiates in a similar manner many of the mappings we have already witnessed. Determining the course of therapy is choosing the direction of travel (Line 1), having a private agenda is being on one’s own track (Line 2), and “working co-operatively” from the therapist’s point of view entails giving the therapist primary driving rights. In Line 5, the patient construes the

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initial therapeutic difficulties as “going through quicksand”, an example of an obstacle/impediment. Interestingly, in Line 7, not having any interested driver, which implies a stop to the therapeutic progress, is seen by the patient as “stimulating”. While stopping during the therapeutic journey is mostly seen as undesirable, it can also correspond to the ‘resting points’ depicted in Aronov and Brodsky’s River model (level 3), and might hypothetically have been developed as such. 6.3 Summary of journey metaphors across the four levels Table 9 below summarises how the journey frame resonates across its four identified levels of instantiation in the therapeutic discourse community, and how journey-related metaphors are amenable to both constancy and variation as they move towards increasingly situated contexts of use. The communicative purposes which motivate each level of specification, from theorisation to actual therapeutic talk, are also shown. If we assume an ideal underlying constancy to the salient conceptualisations across the conceived theorisation – pedagogy – therapist-patient talk chain, we would equally expect the carriers of these conceptualisations (i.e. metaphors) to exhibit, at the very least, a schematic commonality that provides a foundation across the links of the chain. In the case of conceptual metaphors, the source of this commonality resides in their presumed universal and embodied motivation at level 1, which conceptual metaphor theory adequately explains. On the other hand, despite the need for constancy, situated communicative objectives at different levels may motivate modifications to these conceptualisations, leading to metaphor variation. Again, the potential for conceptual metaphors to be substantively extended and elaborated in flexible ways fulfils this communicative requirement. As Hellsten (2003) remarks, metaphors “have to be robust enough to carry certain implications from one context to another, but at the same time flexible enough to allow for different formulations in different contexts”. The present study exemplifies these observations. For example, mapping patients onto either ‘fellow traveller’ or ‘obstacle’ in the journey domain becomes a contrastive feature of two different training models, the latter with an obvious therapist-centric outlook. Training models are incidentally particularly productive in terms of explicit analogical relations between the therapy and journey domains (e.g. the various types of tools and hazards in the river model), perhaps due to the supposed advantages of analogical learning. Also, while the therapist is ideally construed at this level as a benevolent guide who gradually imparts skills to a relatively innocuous patient, actual therapeutic talk can indicate a different reality from idealised models (Lakoff, 1987) – one with problems such as deflection and



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Table 9.  Summary of journey metaphors across the four levels Level

Metaphors and mappings

Motivations/communicative purposes

1. Primary and conceptual metaphors

purposes are destinations difficulties are impediments purposeful activities are journeys

Unsituated, presumably universal embodied experiences

2. Theorisation

therapy is a collaborative journey therapeutic difficulties are impediments (e.g. impasses, roadblocks)

Construal of core principles based on naturalness of metaphors at level 1; formulation of terminology

3. Specific training models

therapy is a canoe trip –  Therapists (Ts) are guides, patients (Ps) are learner canoeists –  Therapy techniques are (various) canoeing tools – Difficulties are (various) hazards

Adaptation of core conceptualisations from level 2, expanded analogically to convey specific instructional perspectives

therapy is (the therapist’s) road journey – Ts are drivers, Ps are obstacles –  Coping mechanisms for therapy are (various) coping mechanisms for driving 4. Actual therapeutic talk

therapy is a road journey – Directing therapy is navigating –  Control of therapy is control of vehicle (car) –  Fighting for control is fighting for the wheel – Difficulties are impasses – Distractions are detours

For Ts: Application and adaptation of core conceptualisations from levels 2 and 3

Emphasised by Ts: – Therapy is a collaborative journey – Difficulties are impasses – Ts are drivers, Ps are passengers

For both Ts and Ps: Negotiation of metaphors facilitated by mutual competence at level 1, and T’s competence at levels 2–3. Evaluative, affect-laden

Emphasised by Ps: –  T and P are non-collaborative travellers on separate paths/journeys – T is a ‘soundboard’ or navigation aid

For Ps: Conceptualisation of own subjective experience/ perceptions of therapy

resistance, and which revolves around who should assume immediate control of the metaphoric vehicle. In extreme cases, therapists and patients are not even construed as being on the same journey, facing the same difficulties together.

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Some concluding remarks are now in place before I proceed to the prescriptive aim of this chapter. Although my perspective has shifted from previous chapters to examine metaphors of therapy, with a focus on journey-related metaphors, important underlying themes are constantly recurring and reinforced. A major theme is the oft-discussed issue of constancy and variation in conceptual metaphor, which figures prominently in the deep seated theoretical divide between cognitivists and culture/discourse-oriented scholars mentioned in Chapter 2. This chapter has echoed the argument of ‘functional complementarity’ between constant and varying aspects of metaphors made in Chapter 3. The difference is that in Chapter 3, I examined constancy and variation as simultaneous components of a strategy within a single therapeutic case, while in this chapter I examined complementarity at the macro level of the therapeutic discourse community. Thus the (selective) use of journey-related lexis such as impasses and roadblocks makes sense in light of their utility in presenting therapy as highly goal-oriented, the elaborate analogical extensions of the journey domain are pedagogically motivated, and the ways in which journey metaphors become resources for expressing interpersonal difficulties is precisely what one would expect from a discourse dynamics perspective. A general implication for metaphor variation research is that taking a complex domain like psychotherapy as a case study and systematically considering the separate discourse activities (both written and spoken) therein allows us to see, with greater clarity, how different explanations of metaphor variation work together to provide an overall picture. It should be interesting to replicate the present case study approach for other equally complex and multi-levelled discourse domains. From the perspective of Zinken et al.’s notion of discourse metaphors, the findings here should contribute to the general argument that conceptual metaphors, with their inherent capacity for constancy and variation (Musolff, 2008: 319), are indeed heuristic framing devices par excellence. There remain many promising avenues for further research. Some obvious ways to extend the current study would be to analyse more comprehensive (and possibly cross-cultural) corpora, compare conceptualisations at different stages of the therapeutic process (e.g. beginning and end) (Boylstein, Rittman, & Hinojosa, 2007), as well as to examine other discourse metaphors such as therapeutic talk is reflecting one another (see footnote 36). Studying how different discourse metaphors co-exist and interrelate would uncover the multiple ways in which an abstraction like ‘therapeutic process’ can be conceptualised. To the extent that similar discourse metaphors exist in ostensibly different therapeutic schools, the question of how metaphors may neutralise differences (Kopp, 1995), or the more critical question of whether these differences are really substantial in the first place, may be fruitfully addressed. Moreover, as has been pointed out (Hellsten, 2005; Musolff, 2008; Zinken, Hellsten, & Nerlich, 2003), the constancy and variation of discourse



Chapter 6.  From therapeutic discourse to the discourse of therapy 145

metaphors can be studied both across domains of usage (i.e. levels) and over periods of time, the latter approach being important for understanding how conceptualisations evolve and compete for survival. Psychotherapy presents a fascinating context as the dual pressures of scientific scrutiny and clinical efficacy compel frequent theory shifts. Another prospect would be to consider not so much the substantive contents of metaphors, but to investigate how they influence meta-linguistic aspects such as the rhetorical structure of therapeutic sessions. If therapy were indeed conceptualised as a collaborative journey, does that implicitly regulate the conversational turn-taking structure? Answers to these questions will bring welcome insights to the multi-aspectual role of metaphors in psychotherapeutic activity. 6.4 The prescriptive aim: Discourse metaphors as feedback In 2005, a special issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology was devoted to the underestimated value and importance of feedback in psychotherapeutic practice. Feedback can be broadly defined as an implicit or explicit response to an individual’s behaviour which influences the continuance of that behaviour9 (Benne, Bradford, & Lippitt, 1964). In the psychotherapeutic context, the perceived need for feedback regarding the progress of patients arises most significantly from the fact that many psychotherapists tend to be overly optimistic about treatment efficacy, and overlook or ignore various symptoms of patient worsening (Lambert, 2005). Consequently, several modes and channels of feedback have been suggested, ranging from informal verbal exchanges and session rating scales (Duncan et al., 2003) to more sophisticated performance analysis systems.10 The overarching idea is that some form of measurement should be performed to constantly compare expected patient treatment responses (based on theory) with actual responses, so that therapists can make more informed predictions about the likely outcome. We can use our multi-levelled characterisation of therapeutic discourse as a framework to describe what the idealised communication between theory and clinical reality implied by the above views might look like. Removing level 1, which has no present relevance, the remaining three levels recapitulated below may represent abstract components of a potential feedback system. On the present subject 9. Incidentally, this is a metaphorical sense derived from its original usage in engineering and cybernetics, to refer to the process of returning part of a circuit/system’s output to its input. 10. Psychotherapist Scott D. Miller is a particularly prominent advocate of therapist effectiveness, and has written extensively on patient feedback as a key component of therapist performance metrics. See www.scottdmiller.com.

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of feedback, we can further assume that these levels operate not only for CBT, but for any therapeutic orientation: Level 2: Theorisation Level 3: Therapist training models Level 4: Actual therapeutic talk A holistically conceived feedback system would allow that feedback should not be limited to individual therapist-patient pairs (i.e. level 4), where therapists gather responses from their patients to improve their personal future work. Instead, the potential scope of feedback should extend to the other levels, as an affirmation of the rigorous links between theorisation, training, and practice. It is therefore entirely plausible for lessons learnt by the therapist, in regard to the perceived progress of patients, to influence future theorisation (level 2) and formulation of training models (level 3) (Rakovshik & McManus, 2010). Cameron (2007a, b) especially reminds us that the situated negotiation of metaphors in interaction could crystallise, over a “macro time scale”, into new understandings at higher levels of discourse, such as the present case of therapeutic theorisation. We have seen that it is the resonance of discourse metaphors which provides a naturally occurring but under-observed communicative link across the levels. Therapists have preconceived theoretical concepts, in the form of metaphoric framing devices, about how ideal sessions are to be conceptualised and delivered. The metaphoric structure of these concepts means that they can be conveniently explained to patients, if need be, when discussing mutual expectations and perceptions about the therapeutic progress. Conversely, patients’ responses and input throughout the course of therapy, which are facilitated by their competence with metaphor and shaped by their individual circumstances, can provide guidelines for adjustments of theoretical/pedagogic models to better capture these various circumstances. For example, the metaphor of “(subtly) fighting for the wheel” in therapist-patient pair 2 above highlights the possibility of patients exerting subtle control over the session – a point captured by neither the river nor the road journey model. The metaphor researcher’s and discourse analyst’s interest in tracing metaphor resonances thus becomes a means of documenting, both synchronically and diachronically, how theoretical constructs and expectations align with, or deviate from, what actual therapeutic participants experience. On their part, therapists can work towards incorporating the type of spontaneous and informal verbal feedback seen in this chapter as a standard feature of therapeutic sessions. Instead of having the three levels in linear sequence, the feedback system thus conceived would be better represented by Figure 4 below which shows the potential feedback paths.



Chapter 6.  From therapeutic discourse to the discourse of therapy 147

Actual therapeutic talk Patient-initiated metaphors Therapist-initiated metaphors

Patient-initiated metaphors Therapist-initiated metaphors Metaphors of therapy

Therapist-initiated metaphors Theorisation

Therapist-initiated metaphors Therapist training models

Contextualisation/adaptation of metaphors

Figure 4.  The three levels as a feedback system

The bidirectional arrows illustrate the mutual information flow that can occur between the levels. Just as psychotherapy theories and training models provide metaphors to be used in actual therapy, the characteristics of both patient and therapist-initiated metaphors uttered during actual therapeutic talk can reciprocally inform both levels. Also, while the movement from theorisation to training models (i.e. level 2 to 3) usually involves a contextualised rendition of a more abstract metaphor, the reverse process where aspects of training model feed back into psychotherapy theories is also possible, although this is not presently discussed. Before concluding, I want to discuss some implications which the demands of feedback might bear on the selection of appropriate framing devices. If, in addition to their role as heuristic frames, conceptual metaphors and the language which instantiates them are to serve as effective bridges of feedback, additional criteria would be necessary in deciding which ones are more appropriate than others. We have seen how the choice of conceptual metaphors at the theoretic and pedagogical levels is likely motivated by the usual considerations of cognitive naturalness, inferential productivity, and most importantly, their ability to manifest the theoretical principles in the target domain(s). These considerations are understandably therapist-centric in the sense that it is primarily the therapist who is the targeted audience (cf. Aronov & Brodsky, 2009: 195). However, if some form of participatory feedback from patients is desired, framing devices would not only have to be inferentially robust, but understandable and appealing enough such that patients can explore them without feeling alienated, or ‘assailed’ by overly abstractsounding theories. Patients’ acceptance of the core rationale and principles of the therapeutic school in question, as expressed by these framing devices, has in turn been shown to predict more positive outcomes in treatment and relapse prevention (Safran & Segal, 1996; Strunk, DeRubeis, Chiu, & Alvarez, 2007). A good way to gauge the acceptability of framing devices would precisely be to examine the extent to which the relevant metaphors resonate in actual therapeutic

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talk, as we saw with the therapist-patient pairs earlier in the chapter. An example of a framing device which is established at the level of theorisation, but has very little resonance in my corpus of transcripts, is Mergenthaler’s (1996) construal of the therapeutic process as a cycle, based on observed recurrences of certain key moments in therapy. Discourse analytic procedures of investigating which framing devices are more robustly instantiated during actual therapy thus become useful tools for theorists who take seriously the role of feedback in influencing future theorisation and training models. A plausible research project would be to conduct a comparative analysis of rival framing devices, with the extent of instantiation across actual therapeutic talk as a key point of comparison. 6.5 Summary This chapter aimed to provide some complementation to previous chapters by shifting the focus away from the principally infinite class of metaphors used in therapy, to a more constrained set of discourse metaphors used to conceptualise aspects of the therapeutic process itself. These metaphors are, at bottom, cognitively natural ways of expressing and communicating fundamental therapeutic principles. They resonate across the theoretical, pedagogical and clinical levels of therapeutic discourse, and are adaptive towards specific communicative requirements at different levels. My case study of the therapy is a journey metaphor in CBT discourse has shown how this adaptability lies in the ability for highly schematic conceptual mappings to be elaborated in varying ways, and points towards a promising avenue for future research involving other prominent discourse metaphors of therapy. I further suggested how such documentation and comparative analysis can aid therapeutic research, especially within the context of feedback in therapy. Increasing calls for greater communication between therapists, patients, and (potentially) theorists would lead us to expect a corresponding increase in the intertextual instantiation of metaphors of therapy. The charting of these instantiations has the potential of revealing which discourse metaphors can provide inferential robustness for theorisation and pedagogical purposes, while not sacrificing the newly spotlighted criterion of comprehensibility and appeal to patients.

chapter 7

The co-text of metaphors Discourse markers as signalling devices* 7.1 Introduction While previous chapters dealt with the characteristics of metaphoric expressions in psychotherapeutic talk, this chapter highlights the co-textual environment of metaphors, with an emphasis on what are widely known as discourse markers (Fraser, 1999; Schiffrin, 1987). Discourse markers such as you know, well, and I mean have intrigued linguists because of their syntactic freedom and semantic emptiness on one hand, and their tendency to occur at strategic junctures within text and talk on the other (O’Keefe, McCarthy, & Carter, 2007). Robin Lakoff (1973: 462) observed that they are “appropriately used only under precise and welldefined conversational conditions”, which reflects how speakers exploit linguistic resources to maximally advance their discourse objectives (cf. Lenk, 1998). Since a major reason why therapists and patients use metaphors is to communicate information which is otherwise difficult to express in literal terms (McMullen, 1996), we might firstly expect the verbalisation of these metaphors to be accompanied by discourse markers, as a means of contextualising them (Gumperz, 1982) and facilitating their interpretation. The notion of metaphor types as elaborated in Chapter 4 further allows us to identify ‘strategic junctures’ within an extended stretch of metaphoric talk, such that we have grounds to expect a motivated occurrence of discourse markers at these junctures . For example, a strategic juncture within a correspondence-type metaphor would be where a cross-domain mapping is verbalised, while a similar juncture within a class-inclusive metaphor would be where a superordinate category is highlighted. From this point of view, discourse markers can be regarded as a type of signalling/tuning device (Cameron & Deignan, 2003; Goatly, 1997), which broadens the study of metaphor signalling from clause level metaphors to extended metaphors embedded in more global discourse objectives. I begin by arguing that that the avowed emphasis on co-text and context in existing metaphor signalling research should be expanded beyond clause level metaphors to include extended metaphors in discourse. I then discuss the use of * Some parts of this chapter have been published as Discourse markers as metaphor signalling devices in psychotherapeutic talk in Language and Communication (Tay, 2011a).

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discourse markers as a type of signalling device, and point to their co-occurrence with unfolding instantiations of extended metaphors as a feature of the larger discourse context in which both are embedded. After analysing examples of psychotherapeutic talk to illustrate the interaction between discourse markers and metaphoric expressions, I move on to the prescriptive aim, and discuss how the potential communicative value inherent in this interaction can be more explicitly capitalised upon. 7.2 Signalling/tuning devices in the co-text and context Metaphors in discourse have been observed to be frequently accompanied by particles, words and phrases such as imagine, like, sort of, metaphorically speaking, and other so called signalling (Goatly, 1997) or tuning devices (Cameron & Deignan, 2003). One might intuitively suppose that the core function of these devices is simply to indicate the fact of metaphoricity, and for that reason they should occur more with novel (or unfamiliar) than conventional metaphors. However, Goatly’s analysis of metaphors in everyday genres such as conversations, advertisements, and news reports etc. produced a qualitative typology of signalling devices embodied in different linguistic forms (Goatly, 1997: 174–175) and playing a wide variety of roles, such as to “enhance”, “reduce”, or even “kill” metaphoricity. Cameron and Deignan’s (2003) later corpus analysis of everyday spoken discourse further suggests that, contrary to expectations, conventional metaphors are signalled as frequently as novel ones. They generally agree with Goatly on the role of signalling devices in directing the interpretation and adjusting the strength of metaphors, but adopt a more context-centric position by emphasising that the need for such devices depends on the situated “expectations” interlocutors have towards the ongoing discourse. It is perhaps for this reason that they prefer the more nuanced label of ‘tuning devices’. The following examples illustrate the use of signalling/tuning devices: 1. My dog is like a cat. 2. After spending time with these children, I was in a way a child again. 3. The social bonds we have attempted to forge in this country are sort of like glue to join the different races together. Example 1 reflects the traditional view of metaphors as implicit similes, where the presence of like renders the figurative intention explicit. Used in this way, like can be plausibly assumed to play a conventionalised function across different contexts, one limited to the statement of metaphoricity. In a way in Example 2 does not merely highlight metaphoricity, but hedges the strength of the metaphor by



Chapter 7.  The co-text of metaphors 151

limiting the extent of comparison the hearer ought to make between the speaker and a child. Sort of in Example 3 can be analysed along similar lines, but one can also note that in the presumably formal context of its utterance, hedging is additionally motivated by the risk that the metaphor could be judged as too informal (Cameron & Deignan, 2003: 158). The aforementioned authors have contributed significantly to our appreciation of the linguistic and pragmatic aspects (i.e. the co-text and context) of metaphor in specific instances of use. This has been crucial against the backdrop of popular cognitive metaphor theories (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999) which tend to focus on acontextual generalisations. However, despite the avowed sensitivity towards context, the bulk of scholarly attention has been on the role of signalling devices in ‘local’ units of metaphoricity which seldom extend beyond clause level. Seldom discussed is the relationship between signalling devices and metaphors which are extended in service of a larger discourse objective, such as the explication of a complex target concept (Wee, 2005a). While it is understandable, given their corpora-based approach, for these authors to disprefer detailed analyses of whole passages or paragraphs in which one or a few extended metaphors are involved, such a methodological choice is not without its limitations. For example, it becomes easy to overlook how metaphors can be progressively developed and signalled in ways which reflect this progressive development. As the emphasis shifts from documenting the marking of metaphoricity per se to the place of metaphoric expressions within the larger discourse context, it also becomes more appropriate to regard metaphors and signalling devices as co-occurring features, as explained in the following section. 7.3 The co-occurrence of discourse markers and metaphors What type of textual feature is likely to be used to signal an extended metaphor throughout its instantiations? Consider the richly documented phenomenon of discourse markers (aka signals, particles, connectives) such as you know, I mean, well, like, and so (Fox Tree & Schrock, 2002; Fraser, 1999; Schiffrin, 2001; Schourup, 1985), which are especially prevalent in spoken discourse. Despite their apparent syntactic freedom and lack of substantive meaning, discourse markers are known to function as important semantic and pragmatic signposts. Fraser (1999: 950) schematically characterises them as “signal(ling) a relationship between the segment they introduce, S2, and the prior segment, S1”. Importantly, however, their specific, nuanced meanings are “negotiated by the context, both linguistic and conceptual”. Their role in relating discourse segments implies that discourse markers are also important coherence devices (Lenk, 1998), performing specific functions

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such as focusing the listener’s attention (This is, like, really important) (Miller & Weinert, 1995; Underhill, 1988), managing topic transitions (I’m glad you enjoyed dinner. Incidentally, where is Professor Smith?), as well as marking inferential steps (There are pickpockets around, so beware). We are therefore likely to witness a motivated distribution of discourse markers across any extended stretch of talk which systematically and progressively develops a central discourse objective, such as the explanation of a complex concept (cf. R. Gardner, 2007). These markers signpost ‘information state transitions’ (Schiffrin, 1987) and guide the recipient towards optimal interpretation. The systematic and progressive development of extended metaphors has been a focus of recent work. Recall Wee’s (2005a) analysis of rhetorical differences between extended metaphors in popular science texts such as an atomic nucleus is a pinhead in st. paul’s cathedral, and management advice texts such as management is coaching football (Chapter 4). The former predominantly reflects an alignment strategy, while the latter a category construction strategy. Although speakers are not limited to just one strategy of metaphor development even within the same discourse unit, the point is that one can usually identify strategic junctures in a stretch of metaphoric discourse where a source-target correspondence is being established, or a relevant superordinate concept asserted. It is quite conceivable that discourse markers can be used to signal such junctures, as the extended metaphor unfolds. From this perspective, discourse markers and metaphoric expressions are more appropriately viewed as two sets of co-occurring features (among others) mutually constituting the prevailing discourse objective (Ochs, 1996). The existing view of signalling devices as merely indicating, or ‘tuning’ local metaphorical units in discourse can thus be broadened to consider the wider discursive context in which both are concurrently deployed (cf. Fischer, 2010). 7.4 Analysis Previous chapters have shown that metaphors in psychotherapeutic talk may be relatively transient and limited to the conceptualisation of localised discourse entities, in which case they seldom extend beyond the level of the clause, or may persist across larger stretches of talk to develop a central idea. Regardless of their extent of development in the discourse, metaphoric expressions are signalled not merely to highlight metaphoricity or to fine tune their interpretation within their clausal localities, but to contextualise them within the prevailing discourse objective(s), of which they are a constitutive part.

Chapter 7.  The co-text of metaphors 153



A total of ten extended metaphors from different therapist-patient pairs were manually identified and analysed for both strategic junctures and the occurrence of discourse markers at these junctures. A metaphor is considered ‘extended’ if it is developed over at least five grammatical clauses, by either speaker or both. As elaborated above, a strategic juncture is broadly defined by any utterance which systematically develops an established metaphor in accordance with the motivating discourse objective. Examples of strategic junctures include the initial statement of a source-target association, the statement of source/target entities, and the statement of a cross-domain mapping, or a superordinate class-inclusive concept. Table 10 below shows the total number of strategic junctures in the ten extended metaphors, the total number of discourse markers which perform a signalling function therein, and examples of these markers. Table 10.  Strategic junctures and discourse markers in ten extended metaphors No. of strategic No. of discourse Examples of discourse markers junctures markers signalling the junctures 78

94

You know, I mean, you know what, kind of, sort of, right, and, like, so, but

These figures provide some support for the idea that strategic junctures in extended psychotherapeutic metaphors do tend to be signalled by discourse markers with considerable frequency. Nevertheless, a point of clarification needs to be made regarding the intended scope of my analysis, and the extent of my claims about discourse markers. The present analysis should neither be taken to imply that (i) the use of discourse markers is directly motivated by metaphor, and is therefore more frequent in metaphoric as opposed to non-metaphoric discourse, nor that (ii) discourse markers take on distinctive meanings alongside metaphoric compared to non-metaphoric discourse. A serious investigation of these implications would require a much more comprehensive analysis comparing large corpora of metaphoric and non-metaphoric discourse, across different genres of text and talk (Steen et al., 2010). The point of the present analysis is rather to provide some observations about the patterned co-deployment of linguistic resources such as discourse markers and metaphors to support communicative needs in psychotherapy, with reference to detailed analyses of several specific examples. In relation to this point, an important assumption underlying the claim that discourse markers and metaphors work in concert is that in such examples, speakers are deliberately developing a comparison between a source and target concept (i.e. metaphor),

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and drawing the hearer’s attention to the developing metaphor with textual and inferential cues (i.e. discourse markers) (Steen, in press). I will examine three extracts in detail, all of which have been analysed in previous chapters from different perspectives1. The first extract was analysed in Chapter 5 in the context of metaphor variability. Here, I look at the patient’s use of discourse markers across a stretch of literal utterances, followed by a stretch of metaphoric utterances, to highlight how the markers signal important communicative junctures. In the second and third extracts, revisited from Chapter 4, I examine the distribution of discourse markers across extended metaphors used by a therapist to illustrate abstract concepts.

Extract 1

1. Patient:  I mean what would I do? I guess we would just – I just sort of come in here – yeah, I could see it. I could come in here and sort of experiment, you know, with Jim. Kind of just hang out. I don’t do that, you know. It’s just – it’s not who I am. I mean, don’t think you have to take out a court order or anything, but I would like to conduct myself in a way that, you know, if I ran into you in five years or ten years or something like that, there would still be the sense of, you know, we had a relationship that had integrity. And you would, you know, you would – I mean we wouldn’t have to be buddies or anything like that, but that you would – there would be some concern. It wasn’t just a quick, you know, debate. We weren’t the debate team or something like that. I’m not sure. I’m really rambling. 2. Therapist:  Well, it’s interesting in fact that you’re rambling, because part of what you seem to be talking about is the lack of what we might call structure in here or rules or things defining it. 3. Patient:  You know what, I find all relationships stressful. (laughs) You know what, I mean, that’s just really what it is. I meet somebody and the first thing I do is I start – I get out a new piece of granite and I start etching stuff into it, you know. And you know the old saying, (inaudible) in granite? That has nothing to do with how I interact with people. I mean I just – I do start etching it in granite. And – I mean and people like it sometimes. I mean, people like it when you know exactly what they said and when they said it, or have a very – have at least an above average memory for what’s taken place in the past. Not many people do that. But now that I think about it, I have actually no other mode of operating. I don’t have a light and fluffy mode, you know. It’s like

1. Extracts of the other seven extended metaphors can be found at the end of this chapter.



Chapter 7.  The co-text of metaphors 155

the dryer, you know. It’s always heavy – (laughs) – heavy cotton. I like this. This is an insight. It’s always heavy. I don’t have a sort of a – I mean, Jesus, I feel like I walk through the day and it’s like some sort of Russian novel, you know. It’s just heavy and there’s always 15 centuries behind it. And it’s always filled with death and darkness. And, you know, I mean – and even – I mean when I play it up light, it’s always so f***ing calculated, you know. 4. Therapist: Calculate is a good word. 5. Patient: Yeah, sure.

In this extract the patient begins by discussing what he feels should be the ideal way of relating with his therapist (Jim) (Line 1), before broadening the discussion to how he handles “all relationships” in general (Line 3). Especially salient is his recurrent use of I mean and you know (or you know what) throughout his attempt to explain how he prefers to relate. It should be noted that throughout their sessions, this particular therapist-patient pair has been struggling with maintaining a ‘therapeutic alliance’ (Horvath & Greenberg, 1994); i.e. a relationship of mutual trust and understanding. A major reason is the therapist’s inability to fully grasp the patient’s relational style, which prompted the present discussion in the first place. Fox Tree and Schrock’s (2002) postulation of the basic meanings of you know and I mean adequately explains the patient’s use of these markers (cf. Jucker & Smith, 1998). You know invites hearers to make inferences about the ongoing topic, instead of relying entirely on speakers to make their point. One communicative situation which likely motivates its use is when speakers “are having extra trouble expressing themselves” (2002: 738), and thus presumably want hearers to plug potential gaps in understanding, either with mutual background knowledge or otherwise. The basic meaning of I mean is to forewarn upcoming adjustments, which is again to be expected from situations in which speakers are facing problems with expression. The patient here is clearly in such a situation. Towards the end of Line 1, he explicitly states that he is “not sure”, and “rambling”,2 which seemingly extends an invitation for the therapist to offer some interpretation. Furthermore, throughout Line 1, his explanation of his preferred relational style seems to inherently require the therapist to impute his own inferences, especially at junctures prefaced by you know. For example, in

2. In Section 5.3.4, I already suggested that the patient’s “rambling” conveys an impression of incoherence. Some might argue that an extensive use of discourse markers, as in the present case, is precisely symptomatic of such communicative difficulty (Schourup, 1985: 94). See Fox Tree and Schrock (2002), however, for a summary of rebuttals against this view.

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… but I would like to conduct myself in a way that, you know, if I ran into you in five years or ten years or something like that, there would still be the sense of, you know, we had a relationship that had integrity.

The therapist is prompted to imagine the hypothetical situation of meeting the patient “in five years or ten years”, and further prompted to infer what the patient might mean when speaking of a “relationship that had integrity”. The use of I mean in Line 1 is also fairly prototypical, indeed signalling upcoming ‘adjustments’ for the most part. For example, I mean is used to anticipate the possibility of misunderstanding in I mean, don’t think you have to take out a court order or anything…

And also used to preface a clarification that the patient is not expecting to “be buddies or anything like that”. In Line 2, the therapist indeed responds with his own inferences, but does not directly address the patient’s previous comments. Consistent with what might be expected of a psychotherapist, he instead offers an evaluation, prefaced by well, of why the patient might be sceptical of the therapeutic alliance in the first place. In Line 3 the patient continues his explanation, broadening the discussion to all relationships in general. A similar distribution of you know and I mean, occurring at junctures where therapist inferences seem to be invited, can be readily observed. The patient also begins to use metaphors, which is unsurprising given that “during psychotherapy, people struggle to find words to capture difficult-to-describe sensations… they often rely on figurative expressions to convey what they want to say” (McMullen, 1996: 252). What is noteworthy for the present discussion is their functionally motivated co-occurrence with discourse markers in the overall explanatory context. For example, the patient’s metaphor of “get(ting) out a new piece of granite and… etching stuff into it” is presumably intended to express in a concrete way his habit of forming deep first impressions. His attempts to establish the explanatory power of the metaphor by first appealing to shared knowledge (you know the old saying…), and then ‘upgrading’ the force of metaphoricity by asserting that it is in some sense ‘literal’ (I do start etching it in granite), are respectively flagged by you know and I mean. Later in the turn, he deploys a series of highly novel metaphors to explain that his relational style is “always heavy”, that he “(does not) have a light and fluffy mode”, and that his days are like “some sort of Russian novel”, with “15 centuries behind it”, and “always filled with death and darkness”. In all of these instances, you know or I mean occur in close proximity with the metaphoric expressions. Importantly, however, their primary role is neither to indicate the fact, nor to adjust the strength of metaphoricity. It is rather to contextualise (Gumperz, 1982) the metaphors by highlighting their explanatory function



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within the overall communicative objective. This of course does not prevent the type of clause level signalling/tuning devices mentioned in Section 7.2 from also occurring. As we see from the data, markers highlighting the fact of metaphoricity per se (e.g. It’s like some sort of Russian novel) within the grammatical structure of individual metaphoric clauses are also attested to. The above analysis shows that metaphors embedded within specific discourse functions can be flagged in ways similar to isolated clause-level metaphors. However, in the former case, the notion of ‘metaphor signalling’ as discussed in the literature needs to be expanded to take into account the mutual constitution of metaphors, and the signals themselves, towards the overall discourse objective(s) at hand. I now illustrate this point further with two examples of extended metaphors (Extracts 2 and 3). In extended metaphors, one can typically identify strategic junctures within the unfolding instantiations (Wee, 2005a), such as when a correspondence is established between source and target, or when a superordinate concept subsuming both source and target is highlighted. I will show how discourse markers occurring at these junctures can be analysed as markers of an overarching discourse strategy involving the stepwise development of an extended metaphor. Other than revealing an important aspect of metaphor signalling not previously considered, I will suggest how the present description is potentially useful for the task of training therapists to communicate their metaphors effectively.

Extract 2 Recall (Section 4.4.1) that in this extract, the therapist introduces and elaborates a metaphor of bomb disposal to illustrate her patient’s study pressures, the magnitude of which resembles those faced by bomb disposers. 1. Therapist: Yeah, I mean [it’s your around] (ph) reading, I think it’s the expectation and the demands that may cause you anxiety. [Unless to say] (ph) like being in that school in Portugal then being sent here, knowing that your company sent you – and what would it look like if you returned back home? Would you be a failure? You know, here you are, you’re [with them], wanted them for your school – and you have all these other smart folks around you. And you’re not the same star that you were back in your country. And you’re afraid the same thing may happen that happened in Portugal.  So with those things in the background, why wouldn’t someone be anxious about an exam or about material or whatever the case is? If you have this huge – you know, it’s kind of like even an example – and we have to begin wrapping up. But like – you know, like a person – the people who have to disbomb bombs? You know – I forget what

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they call them, but if a building even called, the bomb squad comes in, right? And it’s one person who has to realise – figure out which wires to disconnect. And you see the clock – it’s ticking and it’s down to three seconds or whatever, and you’ve got to figure out which wire to pull.  And they know that if they don’t get the – if they don’t pull the right cord, the whole building – the whole city’s going to be bombed and everything. That’s a lot of pressure, right? And so that can be – if that person had so much anxiety at that point to say, “Uh, I can’t do this.” You know – whereas the bomb trainers – thankfully, they’re not like that, you know? They can think under pressure and put that anxiety aside and not think about all of this stuff when they’re doing that, right? So if you have all this pressure behind you, in the background, when you take a test or you sit down and read something, that can affect your performance as well.

It can be observed that the therapist’s development of her extended metaphor follows a category construction strategy, which is concerned with establishing the metaphoric source as a truly persuasive exemplar of the superordinate concept(s) the discourse producer has in mind. Here, the therapist is presumably not fixated with establishing rigorous correspondences between source (a bomb disposal scenario) and target (the patient’s study issues). There seems to be no practical necessity to pursue whether the “wires”, “ticking clock”, “building”, and “city” etc. have any tangible target domain counterparts. Instead, the therapist’s strategy is to use a dramatically (and perhaps spontaneously) elaborated source scenario to illustrate the superordinate principle (Glucksberg & McGlone, 1999) that “if you have all this pressure behind you, in the background… that can affect your performance”. Notice also how the prominence of this principle is rhetorically underscored by its explicit statement at the beginning of the second paragraph, and the conclusion of the last paragraph (the first paragraph being prior to the metaphor). Some strategic junctures defining the successful deployment of a class inclusive strategy would include (i) the place(s) where the source/target domain(s) are stated, (ii) where the superordinate concept(s) are stated, and (iii) where the source domain(s) receive elaboration so as to be perceived as persuasive exemplar(s). The pertinent suggestion here is that discourse markers, being signals of key communicative intention, should demonstrate a tendency to flag these strategic junctures. Incidentally, to the extent that this is true, evidence is also provided for the claim that discourse producers are indeed oriented towards the key features outlined for the alignment, category construction, or any other metaphoric discourse strategies that exist.



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We observe three discourse markers – you know, and, and right? – figuring prominently in this extract. The first paragraph, spoken prior to the metaphor, summarises the patient’s issues, which constitute the target domain of the subsequent metaphor: You know, here you are, you’re [with them], wanted them for your school – and you have all these other smart folks around you. And you’re not the same star that you were back in your country. And you’re afraid the same thing may happen that happened in Portugal.

It is noticeable how discourse markers are suitably positioned for pragmatic emphasis. You know draws the patient’s attention to the upcoming talk and prompts him to start thinking about his situation (here you are…). And, whose discourse function extends beyond conjunction to convey a cumulative sense when repeated in close proximity (Schiffrin, 2001: 66), emphasises key aspects of the situation. These include his academic competitors (smart folks around you, you’re not the same star that you were), as well as his fear of an unelaborated past event recurring (the same thing may happen that happened). From the therapist’s point of view, these aspects are not meant to be seen as independent components merely occurring simultaneously, but as cumulatively affecting the patient. Although she has not properly introduced any metaphor into the discourse yet, the therapist has adequately set up and drawn attention to these prospective aspects of the target domain. The next two paragraphs introduce and elaborate the bomb disposal metaphor. The therapist begins by stating the superordinate principle as it applies to the target domain, prefacing it with the discourse marker so: So with those things in the background, why wouldn’t someone be anxious about an exam or about material or whatever the case is?

She then proceeds to trigger the patient’s presumed background knowledge about bomb disposal with several you knows, as well as the utterance final right?, which seeks confirmation of understanding: If you have this huge – you know, it’s kind of like even an example – and we have to begin wrapping up. But like – you know, like a person – the people who have to disbomb bombs? You know – I forget what they call them, but if a building even called, the bomb squad comes in, right?

This is followed by an elaborative sequence by which the therapist vividly illustrates the bomb disposal scenario, constructing it as a true prototypical exemplar of an activity characterised by multiple, cumulative sources of pressure. The use of the cumulative and achieves this important effect in the metaphoric strategy. She concludes the sequence by alluding to the superordinate principle, this time as

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it applies to the source domain (That’s a lot of pressure, right?). Once again, right? elicits confirmation of understanding: And it’s one person who has to realise – figure out which wires to disconnect. And you see the clock – it’s ticking and it’s down to three seconds or whatever, and you’ve got to figure out which wire to pull. And they know that if they don’t get the – if they don’t pull the right cord, the whole building – the whole city’s going to be bombed and everything. That’s a lot of pressure, right?

The final portion reveals the therapeutic point of the metaphor, encapsulated by the superordinate principle. Even though multiple sources of cumulative pressure can affect one’s performance, be it during bomb disposal or studying for exams, the patient should derive lessons from the former scenario and learn to handle his pressures. So as a conclusion marker at the end of the extract reiterates the principle, while you know, and, and right? continue to perform the previously discussed functions – inviting introspective, inferential work, expressing a cumulative sense, and seeking confirmation of understanding – at strategic junctures of the metaphoric discourse. And so that can be – if that person had so much anxiety at that point to say, “Uh, I can’t do this.” You know – whereas the bomb trainers – thankfully, they’re not like that, you know? They can think under pressure and put that anxiety aside and not think about all of this stuff when they’re doing that, right? So if you have all this pressure behind you, in the background, when you take a test or you sit down and read something, that can affect your performance as well.

An incidental but noteworthy point is the relative scarcity of self-adjustment markers (e.g. I mean) in the therapist’s discourse, compared to the patient’s discourse. It is probably unsurprising for therapists to be more assured of their utterance contents than patients, which explains why self-adjustment markers are less frequently seen, at least in this extract. To be sure, though, therapist self-adjustments and self-repairs certainly occur, sometimes in pragmatically exceptional situations (Section 4.5). We now move to Extract 3 which, as pointed out in Section 4.5, reflects the alignment rather than the category construction strategy.

Extract 3 Recall that in this example, the therapist is attempting to get her patient to concur with the construal of life as a hurdled race, and difficulties as hurdles. 1. Therapist: Okay, so you don’t want to do those things? If you had your sights set on doing grad school here, there is nothing that should be able to stop you from doing that. Right? And sometimes, Marta, when



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we have a goal or something in front of us and that we want really bad, sometimes obstacles and things present themselves. Have you ever seen hurdles before? Like track races? And they have around the track, they are runners and they jump over these things. 2. Patient: Yeah. 3. Therapist:  You know, that’s kind of like what life’s course is like. We have this track that we have to run around. But sometimes there are hurdles that we have to jump over in order to get to the finish line. And where we’re trying. You know, and so you have this goal to (audio gap) You have this goal to get this graduate degree. You have this goal to get educated in the States. You have this goal to maybe one day go back to Portugal and teach with this degree and things that you’ve done. And you have these hurdles that keep presenting themselves. You have a situation with your boyfriend and the break up. That could have been a hurdle. You have this crazy, you know, boss and advisor, right? You have, you know, dealing with your mom’s situation. And your family situation and dealing with that loneliness. That’s a hurdle. Right? Sometimes life presents different hurdles that we have to cross, but that doesn’t mean when we fall and not continue to go toward that. Right? You know, just trying to find ways to muster up enough energy to get over these particular hurdles. And what they use in track terminology, they clear the hurdle. Sometimes they even kick them down to go over to the next one. You know it’s like psshhh and then go on to the next one. Psshh and go on to the next one. That’s kind of how you have to look at this stuff. And it’s difficult going through. Because sometimes the hurdles bounce back up and hit the runner. (laughs) You know? You think you’re clearing it, and you’re not really having cleared it. It’s still really – it’s still there. And there are ways to do that.

In this extended metaphor, the therapist elaborates on a number of insightful correspondences between the source concept of a track race, and the target concept of the patient’s life. Of interest is her use of the discourse markers you know and right? According to Schiffrin (1987: 268), you know tends to occur at significant “information state transitions” in discourses with an explanatory function, where the speaker’s objective is to reduce an initial asymmetry with regard to some body of knowledge held by speaker and hearer. One of its key functions is to allow a speaker “to check on how the discourse is creating an interactional progression away from an initially asymmetric distribution” (Schiffrin, 1987: 279). Similarly, utterance-final right? can be characterised as a check on the hearer’s understanding, or a request for concurrence on a previously made point. We therefore have grounds to expect such discourse markers to occur alongside strategic junctures

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of an alignment metaphoric strategy, which dovetail with Schiffrin’s notion of information state transitions. The first step towards the “progression away from an initially asymmetric distribution” would obviously be to introduce the metaphor in question. Notice how this is fronted by you know in the extract: Therapist:  You know, that’s kind of like what life’s course is like. We have this track that we have to run around. But sometimes there are hurdles that we have to jump over in order to get to the finish line…

Having laid out both the source and target components of her metaphor, the next step prescribed by the alignment strategy would be to match source entities with their target counterparts. The objective here is to get the patient to agree that her life issues (target entities), which by this stage of therapy constitute shared knowledge for both therapist and patient, can indeed be felicitously mapped to hurdles (source entities). Information state transitions would then be predicted to happen where the mappings are suggested. Once again, the occurrences of you know and right? largely correspond to these transitional points: Therapist: … And you have these hurdles that keep presenting themselves. You have a situation with your boyfriend and the break up. That could have been a hurdle. You have this crazy, you know, boss and advisor, right? You have, you know, dealing with your mom’s situation. And your family situation and dealing with that loneliness. That’s a hurdle. Right?

The final step in utilising the alignment strategy is to generate useful source domain inferences and map these back onto the target. The therapist takes her patient through three main inferences. The first is the fact that when we fall, we should try to “muster up enough energy” to continue instead of giving up. Secondly, the fact that though we sometimes only clear hurdles ‘partially’ by kicking them down, we should not let this imperfect clearing affect our continued progress. Thirdly, the fact that “sometimes the hurdles bounce back up and hit the runner”, meaning that old problems can return to haunt us. If we assume that each additional felicitous inference contributes towards the overall persuasiveness of the metaphor, we can say that every such inference constitutes an information state transition. Predictably, you know and right? occur in close proximity to all of them: Therapist: … Sometimes life presents different hurdles that we have to cross, but that doesn’t mean when we fall and not continue to go toward that. Right? You know, just trying to find ways to muster up enough energy to get over these particular hurdles. And what they use in track terminology, they clear the hurdle. Sometimes they even kick them down to go over to the



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next one. You know it’s like psshhh and then go on to the next one. Psshh and go on to the next one. That’s kind of how you have to look at this stuff. And it’s difficult going through. Because sometimes the hurdles bounce back up and hit the runner. (laughs) You know? You think you’re clearing it, and you’re not really having cleared it…

With an emphasis on discourse markers, the three extracts above have highlighted the as yet under-explored interactional dynamics between metaphoric expressions and their immediate co-text. I have focused on two theoretical implications which surface as a result. Firstly, the analysis of metaphor signals can be profitably expanded from clause-level signalling to consider the stepwise, progressive work that extended metaphors perform in discourse. The second theoretical point made is that discourse markers and the strategic junctures of extended metaphors with which they co-occur can be properly analysed as co-constitutive features of the larger discourse function(s) in which both are embedded, and which both index (Fischer, 2010; Ochs, 1996; Silverstein, 2003; Yamaguchi, 2005). Schiffrin (2001: 66) has argued that If discourse markers are, indeed, indices of the underlying cognitive, expressive, textual, and social organization of a discourse, then it is ultimately properties of the discourse itself (that stem, of course, from factors as various as the speaker’s goals, the social situation, and so on) that provide the need for (and hence the slots in which) markers appear.

Working within a construction grammar perspective, Fischer (2010) has similarly shown how the distributional and semantic properties of interactional phenomena traditionally analysed as auxiliary to spoken discourse (discourse markers, tag questions, reformulations etc.) are driven by more abstract levels of socio-cognitive discursive representations. These conclusions testify to the context-centric character of discourse markers and their distribution, a description equally applicable to the context-centric perspective on metaphors in discourse. They also suggest that discourse markers, not unlike metaphors, are multifunctional (Schiffrin, 1987). They can operate at different “planes” of discourse, connecting the “participation frameworks”, “information states”, and “ideational, action, and exchange structures” of text and talk. This chapter examined only a limited set of markers interacting with metaphors which focus on conveying information in psychotherapy. Future studies could take the multifunctionality of discourse markers as a point of departure, and examine co-occurring metaphors serving other important (interpersonal and textual) functions in psychotherapeutic talk – a point which brings us now to the prescriptive aim.

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7.5 The prescriptive aim: Leveraging upon the cognitive and social functions of discourse markers Alongside the more substantial contents of therapist-patient interaction, seemingly trivial elements such as discourse markers might be deemed by psychotherapists as ‘loose talk’, ‘vague language’ (Channell, 1994; Cutting, 2007), or even “verbal garbage” (Schourup, 1985: 94). However, as has been shown, it could well be that such elements emerge upon closer scrutiny as non-trivial indicators of deeper cognitive and communicative dynamics at work, even in instances of presumably spontaneous therapeutic talk. In view of our prescriptive aim, which aims to translate observations from an unplanned conversational environment into practical techniques for psychotherapy, there is room to explore how some implications of the co-occurrence between discourse markers and metaphors can be capitalised upon. Once again, an emphasis on the communication of metaphors should be a welcome complementation to existing psychotherapeutic work on preconceived stock metaphors (e.g. Burns, 2001, 2004; Kottler & Carlson, 2009; Loue, 2008; Stott et al., 2010), which tend to focus on what source concepts to use for which targets, rather than how they should be delivered to patients. Consider again Gumperz’s (1982) notion of contextualisation cues, which I alluded to in several places above. Contextualisation cues are elements that guide listeners towards interpreting the nature of the discourse activity at hand. While Gumperz seems more interested in prosodic features as such cues, I have argued both in Chapter 4 and the present chapter that discourse markers, embedded within instantiations of extended metaphors, also appear to be cueing important junctures within the latter. Discourse markers are thus examples of a naturally occurring and conventional resource which can be deployed to draw patients’ attention to these key details. Obviously, discourse markers are not the only resource which can be used to enhance the understanding and communication of useful metaphors, especially when we look beyond purely verbal cues to gestural ones, or even metaphors involving other modalities.3 One can readily think of a wide inventory of phrases therapists can use to explicitly signal an upcoming correspondent mapping, or

3. I am emphasising here how strategic junctures within extended metaphors may be cued by gestures or other non-verbal means, rather than how the metaphors themselves might be gestural or otherwise. The use of gestures and other non-verbal modalities to express metaphor has been robustly investigated (Cienki & Müller, 2008; Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009). Gestures in particular have obvious cognitive (McNeill, 2005) and communicative import in a face-to-face setting like psychotherapy (cf. Müller & Cienki, 2009). Regrettably, due to the practical difficulties involved in obtaining video recordings of therapy sessions, I am unable to pursue the topic here.



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class inclusive move, or any such strategic juncture in an extended metaphor. These range from simple one-word cues such as likewise, similarly, to whole phrases such as notice how this image parallels your [target situation] (for correspondence metaphors), or this characteristic of the [source concept] is just like your [target situation] (for class inclusive metaphors). Therapists can also explore the use of simple gestures which iconically reflect the characteristics of a correspondent or class inclusive process, such as performing a horizontal sweep with an open palm to indicate a cross-domain mapping, or a circular motion with the palm to reinforce the notion of class inclusiveness. Together with the analysis in the first half of the chapter, the above recommendations explore possible ways to leverage upon the cognitive implications of discourse markers in extended metaphors. What has been less emphasised thus far are the social and interpersonal aspects of discourse markers which crucially constitute their multifunctionality, and also bear considerable implications for therapeutic communication. Consider the following non-exhaustive list of social and interpersonal functions observed to be played by elements of vague language such as discourse markers across a range of communicative contexts (Cutting, 2007). 1. Conveying a general sense of indirectness, often interpreted as being more polite (or less intrusive) in conversation (Brown & Levinson, 1987) 2. Contributing to the perceived ‘naturalness’ of conversation (McCarthy, 1998) 3. Indicating solidarity, rapport, and ‘in-group’ membership (Cutting, 2000, 2001) It should be apparent how functions such as ‘indirectness’, ‘politeness’, ‘naturalness’, and ‘rapport’ bear implications for therapeutic communication in their own right. We saw in Extract 1, Section 7.4 how the patient’s use of discourse markers seemed to constitute an indirect plea to the therapist for some useful interpretation of his circumstances. Moreover, in the present context of the co-occurrence of metaphors and discourse markers, these functions complement several important, independently observed functions of metaphor use. I mentioned in Section 2.7.1 how metaphors are believed to help build a stimulating and collaborative relationship between therapists and patients, which would clearly also benefit from an enhanced perception of rapport, and a more naturalistic verbal delivery of therapeutic content. Therefore, independent of the precise distributional characteristics of discourse markers and metaphors I have explored in this chapter, their common social and interpersonal import already suggest the potential therapeutic utility of their co-deployment. More research is clearly needed on how the social and interpersonal aspects of metaphors and their co-textual elements interact. All in all, I have emphasised that the therapeutic utility of metaphor can be optimised not merely by judiciously choosing what source concepts to use (Chapter 3), or how source concepts can be associated with target concepts (Chapter 4), but

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also by considering how key informational points within differing source-target configurations can be highlighted, and successfully communicated to patients. Given that no two patients are exactly alike, the onus is still upon therapists to be flexible, accommodating, and constantly sensitive to the particular needs of patients when applying the present guidelines. 7.6 Summary This chapter adopts the central premise that metaphors are as much situated, contingent products of discourse, as they are stable cognitive and socio-cultural patterns of conceptualisation. Among other things, this requires us to consider the linguistic features which co-occur with metaphoric expressions in the discourse contexts in which both are embedded, and both constitute. I have focused on the phenomenon of metaphor signalling and argued that existing work devote attention to the signalling/tuning of localised units of metaphoricity, without due attention on how metaphors can themselves develop in accordance with more global discourse objectives. I then showed how discourse markers of pragmatic intention occur at key junctures of metaphoric development in examples of psychotherapeutic talk. These markers do not indicate or tune the degree of metaphoricity per se, but are more concerned with drawing attention to the stepwise progression of extended metaphors. They therefore reveal an aspect of metaphor signalling which must be more thoroughly investigated if we are to probe deeper into the notion that metaphors “emerge from” (Cameron & Deignan, 2006), and are fundamentally shaped by immediate circumstances of discourse. Finally, in a brief discussion of how my findings can inform therapeutic practice, I underlined the existing emphasis on the substantive, rather than communicative aspects of metaphor in the psychotherapeutic literature, and suggested that discourse markers and other such indicators can be carefully used to draw patients’ attention to strategic junctures within extended metaphors.

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Appendix Therapist: And you’re going to come – you know how, like diamonds? They have to – coal has to go through the fire, that pressure. You know, has to form and shape the things. You know? That’s what this is happening – that’s what this is about, right here. You know you’re that gold forming to that diamond, so you’re going to have to go through the pressure. But when it’s all said and done, and you get that degree that you wanted. It – you are going to look back and like, “Pshew, it was worth it.”  And it’s only going to make you a stronger – it’s only going to make you a better advisor to other students. Right? It depends on what perspective you take on this. Look at this, okay. “Now I know how I need to be when I’m supervising students.” Patient: As I kind of go down each step I can see it. And I can see how like it negates who I do it to, too. You know, how it’s like this insult when I start seeing you as this somebody I need to have to have care for me and be, like and be my friend, right, you know? You just, you can’t be Rene. You have to be my friend otherwise therapy isn’t successful or then it’s just blah, blah, blah, you know? I think well I have to keep – I have to greet (ph) you, Rene. Get more space, too. It seems like that’s part of it. And you start goofing (ph) the center of where you are, so you have to go wondering around for it more. Therapist: Yeah. Patient: I almost don’t want to go down there. You know, there’s something in me that’s released and I keep on getting ideas about, and instead of going really down… Therapist: Yeah. Patient: Because… Therapist: Yeah. Maybe you ought to come back up for a moment and sort of walk you way back up the steps for a minute because, and sort of feel the reversal too, before you go completely. Patient: Right on the tape recorder. How about that. Well well. Well let’s see what should we go in to. I’ll go through my notes once more. Oh yeah. She said one other thing. That there is a complete difference, not a difference they’re the same thing but opposite ends of the spectrum, closing off and being a snob. She said that when she noticed me do at the party I was just closing off and not interacting. But when she has ever tried to do the same thing or other people she’s seen do it, they act snobbish about it. So that kind of pleased me in the fact that if I do behave this way, I won’t behave snobbish. The thing she mentioned was that other times that I’ve interacted, I haven’t interacted honestly. For a very weak analogy, I put up a mirror and people interact and see what they want to see in me. That I’m behind that mirror and they never really see me. Therapist: They see certain aspects of you. Patient: Yeah. When I use the word mirror, I mean I reflect what they want to see so therefore…

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Therapist: You show them the parts of you that fit them but they’re looking for it. Patient: But now this other idea of closing off that I’ve done now, is to just stay closed off and pull down the mirror. I just deny they’re act. Therapist: You mean like just not let them see any of you. Patient: Yes. So really you see there’s no great change in the amount of incite they might glean about my character. There is a great change in the amount of information that they’re getting from me. Therapist: Right. Because they never were getting any incite [sic] Patient: I think maybe that’s my way of handling it a lot of times you know. Therapist: Yeah. Patient: You mentioned earlier that I sound very analytical and I think maybe a lot of times I diffuse my anger by breaking the problem or the source of anger down into little pieces. Like you diffuse a bomb and make it inoperant because if I understand why I’m angry or why somebody has pissed me off, if I understand it then I don’t have to feel mad. Therapist: Um hmm. Patient: You know I guess it is a way of handling my anger. I just do it that way. Therapist: Circuitous kind of way. Patient: Huh? Therapist: Kind of a circuitous way. Patient: Oh God I haven’t slept in three days. I just… I get in bed and I start worrying about something or other. And I’ve got to get to sleep. Christ I get up at 5:30 in the morning and I’m used to going to bed at 5:30. So I’ll go to bed at 7:30, 8:30, as soon as I get Dave’s dinner. And I’ll lay there and start worrying about the bills, or about all the bad checks that are bouncing in and out of the bank like rubber balls, and I start getting scared. And then I start getting worried about being scared, and then I start thinking, “We’ll you’re really blowing it now,” and it just kind of winds up in a vicious little circle that keeps getting tighter. And I’ll get up two or three times during the night. I’ll go over to John’s sometimes. I went over there last night, I got so tight. I’ll go watch TV for a few hours, come back down. It’s usually three or four in the morning before I finally just pass out, and then get up and hour and a half later. Therapist: It sounds like you feel pursued by things. Patient: Oh, God. Yeah, well. It’s like I’m submerged in them. It’s kind of like I’ve been chasing my – it’s like when you see a cat chase its tail around. It’s kind of like me trying to get rid of my troubles by catching my tail. Which is what the job kind of meant to me. It’s like here I go on another little circle that’s gonna end up right back in the position that I started in. Strange, I don’t feel bad now. I’ve been really super busy active since I got home, and I did get some mail today, which helped a little. But I found that it’s my tax forms and… oh gee, that’s not gonna help either ‘cause I know I’ve got about 300 dollars in taxes coming up. So at least I can put that all kind of procrastination. But I’m in another position where I have to wait to see how things turn out.



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Patient:  You know, he – he – he put a damper on the word husband (chuckles) because he said here this – he told a story or something about the husband who went out and cheated on his wife and stuff. Therapist: Just sort of fed right into your fears that husbands are really bad all the time anyway, something like that. Patient: Yeah, it just did something to the word. Therapist: It sounds like husband is really sort of a tyranny for you, where you don’t get to be yourself at all – do your thing. You sort of get locked in this little box with somebody else doing everything. Patient: In other words the nature of this information is not much for the moment that we’re talking about. There is one major I think synthesis. Alright. One analogy we used, you’ll have to forgive me for using analogies continually. In high school I had English teachers that liked me. I was using paper so I keep writing notes. Therapist: So you were kind of doing them… Patient: However we hit across one that rather worked in talking about things because then we could make reference to analogies much easier rather than in reference to myself. That is the fact that I had myself and around myself, I built fences. Because I was so insistent upon keeping good fences and protecting myself, protecting my house inside this fence, I spent all my time mending the fences and never inside the house. To the point of actually tearing the lumber out of the house to build the fences. Ok. So now I’ve been alone for a while and I haven’t had to tend the fences. There’s no reason to. There’s no real interaction lately. So I come back and the house is gone and all I’ve got left is the fences. Ok. That’s an analogy that might come in handy.

chapter 8

Summary, emergent themes and future directions 8.1 Introduction I have three interrelated goals in this concluding chapter. The first is to offer a synthesised summary of my analyses under both the descriptive and prescriptive aims of the book. Chapters 3 to 7 have been concerned with analysing the characteristics of metaphors in psychotherapeutic discourse, and providing suggestions on how the use and management of metaphors in psychotherapy could be enhanced. Besides reviewing these analyses, I also want to sketch a coherent overall profile and draw some meaningful conclusions about the nature of metaphor in psychotherapeutic activity. The second goal is to highlight several additional themes about metaphor and psychotherapy that have emerged in the course of my research. This requires a bird’s eye view which transcends the fairly modular analyses of individual chapters and considers them as a synthesised whole. The final goal is to suggest some future directions for both metaphor and psychotherapy researchers and practitioners, with special attention on how the present findings can be capitalised upon. 8.2 The descriptive and prescriptive aims: A synthesised summary The assumptions and analytic thrust of this book can be summarised with the following statements. 1. Psychotherapy can be characterised along several key contextual dimensions, the nature of which induce therapists and patients to use metaphors in particular ways. A description of these ways enriches our theoretical understanding of metaphor, which has been largely dependent on acontextual accounts. 2. Additionally, a contextual description can inform the therapeutic use and management of metaphors, an enterprise which has tended to overlook both the examination of metaphors in context and the applicability of metaphor theory as developed in cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis. The first statement crystallises the descriptive aim of analysing metaphors in psychotherapy. Besides the inherent interest in studying metaphors in different

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discourse contexts, the nature of psychotherapy has been claimed to render any analysis of metaphors therein particularly rewarding. This has been attempted, from Chapters 3 to 7, with reference to the main theoretical issues which underlie several distinct but interrelated aspects of contemporary metaphor research. The analyses have in turn been used to support the prescriptive aim outlined in the second statement. This has been to show how theoretical ideas within the province of cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis have the potential to inform and contribute to psychotherapeutic practice. Figure 5 below depicts in condensed form a blueprint of this book and brief summaries of the analyses. The top section of Figure 5 recapitulates the salient contextual dimensions highlighted in this book, which characterise psychotherapy as a discourse activity where people from diverse backgrounds conceptualise and communicate their life stories in accordance with certain theoretical (i.e. psychological) principles. Some key characteristics of metaphors which emerge as a result of these contextual complexities, and which constitute the descriptive aim of the book, are summarised in the middle section. The bottom section proceeds to summarise the subsequent prescriptive aim, where the implications of my analyses for the use and management of metaphors in psychotherapy are divided into the two categories of theory and practice. Two proposed contributions to psychotherapy theory were made in my case studies of variability and variation, where I sketched a brief typology of metaphoric variability motivated by therapeutic intent (Chapter 5), and suggested how actual instantiations of framing devices in therapeutic talk constitute a channel of feedback (Chapter 6). Some practical and concrete recommendations were also made, in the form of refinements to existing interview protocols. These include how therapists can utilise image-schematic reasoning to structure their patients’ metaphoric conceptualisations (Chapter 3), make use of metaphor types as strategies to extend these conceptualisations (Chapter 4), and deploy conventional linguistic resources (e.g. discourse markers) to draw attention to strategic junctures within a developing metaphor (Chapter 7). Such theoretical and practical implications are manifestly grounded in different aspects of metaphor theory, as developed within discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics. My overarching point has been that psychotherapists interested in metaphors should not look upon these developments as removed from clinical realities, but should be more aware of their applicability in the context of therapeutic treatment and interaction. It is in fact apparent that these implications can help to elucidate and constrain ambitiously but vaguely stated claims about the “transformative powers” of metaphor (Kottler & Carlson, 2009; Loue, 2008). From the perspective of metaphor researchers, psychotherapy thus constitutes a robust context in which their expertise takes on an applied, prescriptive dimension.

Chapter 8.  Summary, emergent themes and future directions 173



CONTEXTUAL DIMENSIONS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY • Individual and socio-cultural context Idiosyncratic life stories and socio-cultural backgrounds of patients • Interactional context Therapy constituted by face-to-face verbal interaction Mutual construction and negotiation of meanings Shifting and transient discourse objectives Co-textual elements surrounding metaphoric expressions • Theoretical context Different therapeutic schools of thought, subscribing to different framing devices Variations at different levels within the same school INDUCE

CHARACTERISTICS OF METAPHORS (i.e. descriptive aim) • Functional complementarity of embodied, cultural, and individual knowledge in constructing metaphors • Metaphor types (both stable and shifting) as strategies of elaborating extended metaphors • Interplay between source and target concepts in the negotiation and joint construction of therapeutic discourse objectives • Variation of the framing device THERAPY IS A JOURNEYacross different levels of a therapeutic discourse community • Strategic junctures in extended metaphors signalled by co-text (e.g. discourse markers) INFORM

USE AND MANAGEMENT OF METAPHORS (i.e. prescriptive aim) Theory • Categories of metaphoric variability • Metaphor variants as feedback

Practice • Image schematic cues • Metaphor types as templates • Signalling devices at strategic junctures

Figure 5.  A summary of the descriptive and prescriptive aims

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8.3 Emergent themes Beyond the points raised in individual chapters, additional themes regarding the nature of metaphor in psychotherapeutic activity emerge when we survey the chapters from a bird’s eye view. These general themes illustrate how the present work may have implications beyond the scope of the book, and provide a context for extension towards future research directions. 8.3.1 Metaphors operate over different scales of therapeutic activity This book has shown that, in their performance of psychotherapeutic work, metaphors have both a stable, enduring character, as well as a more vacillating and dynamic aspect. We have seen examples where a central metaphoric association (e.g. between physical confinement and emotional isolation) persists to structure, and indeed constitute the topic of consecutive therapeutic sessions. Some metaphoric associations (e.g. therapy as a collaborative journey) can become widely conventionalised and function as framing devices which partially characterise the assumptions of entire therapeutic schools of thought. On the other hand, there are also examples where metaphoric ideas hardly persist beyond the level of the conversational turn, as therapists and patients experiment and grapple with different ways of conceptualising the prevailing topic. One important point is that both stable and dynamic uses of metaphor facilitate therapeutic processes in their own ways. This suggests that there is some significant middle ground between the dichotomous approaches of conceptual/discourse metaphor theory (Zinken et al., 2008), which emphasise the enduring character of metaphoric ideas, and the more recent “dynamical systems” approach (Cameron et al., 2009; Gibbs & Cameron, 2008), which highlights the transient quality of conversational metaphors. I want to suggest that a functionally driven perspective, which considers how characteristics like stability and dynamism facilitate the discourse objectives at hand, might provide us with greater analytic mileage than studies which gravitate towards a preconceived, idealised theoretical notion regarding the nature of metaphors in discourse. 8.3.2 Metaphors fulfil ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions Another way to understand how metaphors and language in general enact psychotherapeutic processes is to characterise psychotherapy with the Hallidayan idea of metafunctions (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) – an approach which has recently been applied to the study of language in clinical settings (Asp & de Villiers, 2010;



Chapter 8.  Summary, emergent themes and future directions 175

Fine, 2008). In Halliday’s view, which has come to define the research paradigm known as systemic-functional linguistics (Halliday & Martin, 1981), any purposive social activity in which language plays a constitutive part imposes three broad demands on the linguistic activity of its participants. Firstly, participants need to express the general subject matter pertaining to the activity, including the entities, processes, and relations involved. This aspect of language is called its ideational metafunction. Secondly, in any social interchange, there must be ways to linguistically encode and express how participants perceive and relate with one another. This is known as the interpersonal metafunction. Lastly, linguistic communication entails aspects such as the sequential organisation of discourse, which is referred to as the textual metafunction. The question in the present context is how therapists and patients deploy metaphors as resources to fulfil the ideational, interpersonal, and textual demands of psychotherapeutic talk. My analyses affirm the general sentiment that metaphors are used for ideational and interpersonal purposes in psychotherapy. Ideationally, we have seen how metaphors ranging from prosaic to highly novel service not just the construction, but collaborative co-construction of what gets discussed in therapy. People draw upon concrete ideational resources grounded in embodiment, culture, and individual experiences to conceptualise and communicate mental states, problems and solutions, their perceptions of other people, situations in their lives, and the therapeutic process itself. Therapists are not merely unidirectional solution providers, but often affirm and participate in the elaboration of patients’ conceptualisations for therapeutic ends. This characteristic of metaphor use is a strong reflection of the inherently interactional nature of psychotherapy, which has been suggested to be the main reason why “mere talk” can “heal” (Ferrara, 1994). On the interpersonal front, metaphors are often promoted in the therapeutic literature as useful for making sessions more lively and informal, especially to younger patients (Brandell, 2000; Burns, 2004; Lyddon et al., 2001). We have however also seen how metaphors can be used as a strategy to negotiate interpersonal obstacles, and to define an idealised therapist-patient relationship in certain theoretical paradigms. How metaphors relate to the textual dimension in psychotherapeutic talk is a relatively underexplored subject in the psychotherapy literature. This book has explored how metaphor use is related to discourse organisation through the notion of metaphor types, as well as the relationship between metaphoric consistency/ variability, and the consistency/variability of conversational topics in therapeutic talk. Taking a cue from previous work on the relationship between metaphors and the structural or sequential organisation of text and talk (Caballero, 2003; Drew & Holt, 1998), one question worth further pursuit might be how certain framing devices (e.g. therapy as a collaborative journey) influence not just the ideational and interpersonal aspects of therapy, but its conversational structure as well. For

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instance, does an explicit subscription to a collaborative stance result in a more equal distribution of conversational turns, or more constructive interruptions? 8.3.3 Metaphor use and management as both ‘science’ and ‘art’ Psychotherapy has been quite aptly described as both a scientific and humanistic endeavour (Hofmann & Weinberger, 2007; Stott et al., 2010). On one hand, therapeutic techniques need to be grounded upon falsifiable theories of psychopathology, and the efficacy of such techniques tested through the “gold standard” of randomised control trials. On the other hand, each patient enters therapy with a unique set of dispositions and experiences which must be individually confronted (Gale, 1991), such that treatment is almost always personal rather than procedural, and requires a good deal of flexibility from therapists. To the extent that metaphor use and management are integrated into the therapeutic process, both its scientific and artful aspects should likewise be acknowledged and developed. I discussed in Chapter 2 what can be characterised as the scientific perspective on the therapeutic role of metaphors. Researchers adopting this approach typically begin with a general theory associating metaphor as a mode of cognition with therapeutically relevant parameters such as emotions, behaviour, and personality. Just like any other therapeutic technique, metaphor is conceptualised as a form of clinical intervention and a “means to an end”, with ideally reproducible treatment effects across different therapists and patients. The underlying goal is to uncover a causal mechanism between metaphor use and therapeutic change. This book has illustrated the complementary perspective of metaphor not just as a therapeutic tool, but as an emergent (Cameron & Deignan, 2006) product of intensive interactions between two or more individuals. Metaphors which arise in psychotherapy might under this view be more appropriately characterised as an “end reflecting the means”; i.e. as textual and conceptual output reflecting a therapeutic encounter shaped by factors unique to each patient (e.g. idiosyncratic experiences, communicative styles, interactional dynamics between therapist and patient). The ultimate goal underlying this approach is not to arrive at a catch-all mechanism, but to understand the situatedness of metaphor use in psychotherapy, such that any attempt to harness metaphors for therapeutic benefit becomes as much a matter of skill and experience, as of hard principles.



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8.4 Future directions for metaphor research and psychotherapeutic practice Finally, I wish to offer some future directions by suggesting other approaches to psychotherapeutic metaphors which lie beyond the present scope, as well as ways to turn the implications for psychotherapy highlighted in this book into practical action. These suggestions are intended to build upon the present findings, and would hopefully extend the descriptive and prescriptive aims of this book in enriching and meaningful ways. 8.4.1 Other approaches to metaphor in psychotherapy

Metaphor from a quantitative perspective In Chapter 1, I explained my decision to adapt a qualitative approach in this book, but also emphasised the complementary value of a quantitative analysis. The increasing sophistication of corpora management and quantitative methodologies (Deignan, 2008; Grondelaers, Geeraerts, & Speelman, 2007; Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2006) should allow us to capture patterns of metaphor use which can further substantiate, extend, and challenge the present claims, or lead to entirely new research directions of relevance and value to psychotherapy (cf. Goss & Mearns, 1997; Howard, 1983). One critical question which has been raised from the therapeutic point of view and can be answered with a quantitative corpus approach is whether psychotherapeutic talk differs enough from ordinary conversation to be considered a medically credible form of treatment (see Section 2.2). While some researchers have suggested that psychotherapy is driven by a list of principles absent from ordinary conversation (Ferrara, 1994: 39–45), one way to empirically investigate this at the level of lexis would be to compare respective corpora, making use of ‘keyness’ features found in popular corpus analysis software such as Wordsmith Tools (Scott, 2008) to determine what words are significantly more frequent in one than the other. Returning to the subject of metaphors, quantitative corpus research is most useful for investigating the relative frequencies of metaphor use, and the range and frequencies of source and target concepts, which can then factor into comparative studies examining wider differences across patient populations. Possible independent variables include the type of psychological condition, gender, age, religion, culture, and other such social categories. As mentioned in Section 2.7, quantitative analyses are also necessary to determine how patterns of metaphor use might correlate with distinct moments in a therapy session (e.g. beginning and endpoints), or other key moments of perceived therapeutic breakthrough (Kris, 1956; Mergenthaler, 1996).

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Metaphor in gesture, artwork, and other modalities It is well known that metaphors as conceptual phenomena can be instantiated in mediums and modalities other than language, or even multi-modally (i.e. where source and target are rendered in different modes [Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009]). The expressive and communicative potential of non-linguistic mediums is likewise a robust area of interest within psychotherapy (Bruscia, 1998; Case & Dalley, 1992; Mills & Crawley, 1986). There is still much to learn about the therapeutic nature and function of metaphors as manifested in spontaneous gestures,1 more explicit therapeutic role-plays or “rituals” (Papp, 1982; Van der Hart, 1983), music, artwork, and other such symbolic resources. We have already seen in Chapter 3 how elements from drawings can be profitably recruited as an ideational resource for constructing therapeutic metaphors – a strategy which may prove effective for eliciting conceptualisations from less verbally inclined patients. Sims and Whynot (1997: 7) discussed an example of a child patient who drew a picture of himself as a dinosaur escaping from an erupting volcano which represented his mother’s volatile anger. This vivid metaphoric scenario, which would have been difficult to verbalise, was to provide a thematic focus not just for the child’s therapy, but for his other family members who were involved in the same group therapy setting. Apart from the idiosyncratic conceptualisations produced by individual patients, some therapists also propose the creative use of culturally entrenched symbols, one example being the images found on Tarot divinatory cards (Semetsky, 2005). Previous work has demonstrated how such symbols might be grounded in conceptual metaphors (Evola, 2008b; Tay, 2007), although the ways in which these conceptual metaphoric instantiations can be integrated into the linguistic context of psychotherapy remain a fascinating prospect for future research. Take, for instance, the image of ‘The Tower’, one of the 78 cards in the Tarot system (Figure 6). The card depicts a bolt of lightning striking the top of a tower and causing its two inhabitants to plunge to the ground. Some conventional divinatory interpretations associated with this card include an abrupt change of circumstances and a fall from grace (Nichols, 1980), which point to conceptual metaphors such as abrupt change is lightning, up is good and down is bad. Whether one is interested in exploiting the metaphoricity of idiosyncratic or culturally entrenched conceptual materials, the way remains open for future research to apply the sort of descriptive-prescriptive dialectic in this book to the analysis of non-linguistic modalities. 1. This likely requires video recording therapy sessions, which infringes upon participants’ privacy and anonymity to a far greater extent than audio recording. I mentioned in Section 1.4.1 that Counselling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works contains videoed re-enactments of therapy sessions. While re-enacted gestures are less naturalistic, they should still be of some value to understanding how gestures work in psychotherapy.



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Figure 6.  Tarot image of ‘The Tower’

Metaphor and cultural sensitivities in psychotherapy Wohl (1989: 343) commented that all forms and aspects of psychotherapy are “inescapably and inextricably bound to a particular cultural framework”. Besides the obvious implications for cross-cultural therapeutic situations2 in an increasingly globalised world, cultural considerations have also been at the heart of many theoretical issues in metaphor research (see Section 2.3.2). Although culture has not been an explicit focus in this book, we have had a glimpse in Chapter 3 of how shared cultural understandings play a role in the construction and interpretation of therapeutic metaphors. There however remain many exciting avenues beyond the present scope to probe the relationship between metaphor, culture, and psychotherapeutic practices and processes. As a genre where abstract concepts such as emotions and suffering are frequently encountered and thematised, psychotherapeutic discourse is particularly useful for cross-cultural approaches to the construal, experience, and communication of these concepts. Examples of questions 2. A therapeutic situation can be defined as cross-cultural if there is “ … noticeable variation among the four elements – the therapist, the patient, the locale or setting, and the method to be employed – that must be a part of any psychotherapy situation” (Wohl, 1989: 344) (cf. my characterisation of the “layers of context” of psychotherapy in Section 2.2).

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include how the cultural convergence/divergence between therapists and patients is reflected in, or influences the choice of metaphors, and how cultural materials (myths, folklore etc.) can be exploited as metaphors for therapeutic ends. The cultural dimension of psychotherapy might also be discernible at the level of framing devices (i.e. psychotherapeutic discourse with a big D [Gee, 2005]) (Chapter 6), where specific metaphors reflect correspondingly specific theoretical assumptions about therapy. Furthermore, metaphor analysis has much to contribute to recent studies of therapeutic traditions motivated by social, political, and cultural values distant from the European roots of contemporary ‘Western’ psychotherapy (Hwang & Chang, 2009; Ozawa-de Silva, 2006). These questions and approaches are of interest not only to metaphor researchers, but are centrally relevant to the concerns of psychotherapists in today’s climate of multiculturalism.

Metaphor use which leads to negative outcomes Those eager to find out how the metaphors which ostensibly pervade our language and thought could be positively applied should also be aware of the difficulties that the same metaphors potentially bring about. In a talk humorously titled How metaphors can save the world (Grady, 2010), Joseph Grady draws from personal experience to remind audience members that metaphors, while certainly stimulating for researchers, can often be met with confusion, indifference, or even disdain from the general public. It is important therefore to tread beyond the idealised confines of metaphor as a tool of cognition and communication and examine negative outcomes associated with its use in psychotherapy. For example, just as there seems to be an aversion towards overly creative and flowery language in everyday communication, a psychotherapist friend of mine shared that many therapists are reluctant to use “corny clichés” and “psychobabble” like life is a journey with patients who would much rather deal with “fresher imagery”. How the therapeutic value of metaphors is influenced by perceptions of excessive novelty, conventionality, or indeed the phenomenon of metaphor itself, is an important question yet to be fully answered. Additionally, while there is an abundance of research on the role of metaphors in positively transforming maladaptive conceptualisations, some therapists suggest that metaphoric thought might actually be implicated in the onset of pathological delusions (Rhodes & Jakes, 2004; Rhodes, Jakes, & Robinson, 2005). It has also been shown that not all individuals can readily and successfully attend to the “cognitive complexities” which inhere in complicated metaphors and analogies (Suit & Paradise, 1985). If we use a simple classification system and sample the number of instances in my corpus where metaphors proposed by therapists or patients are either (i) positively attended to, (ii) overlooked, or (iii) met with difficulty, resistance, or disdain, we will still observe that the final category occurs relatively infrequently.



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Nevertheless, such cases are prominent enough to alert us to the fact that metaphor as a therapeutic strategy is far from straightforwardly and universally applicable. From the perspective of our prescriptive aim, this rehashes the oft-discussed problem of determining which techniques are suitable for which patient populations (J. Frank, 1971), and compels future research to explicate the circumstances under which metaphors should and should not be used. Cases where metaphors are less than positively received would also provide important data for more discourse analytic concerns. Careful analysis of such interactions might reveal insights into issues including the (metalinguistic) perceptions of metaphoric communication by therapists and patients (see examples in Section 3.3.4), the absence of invariance in conventional metaphors which contribute to misalignments in understanding, and the sources of multiple metaphoric meanings which are likely to be revealed when therapists and patients explicitly talk through episodes of misunderstanding. 8.4.2 Turning therapeutic implications into actions Although the present discourse analytic approach might have raised some implications and provided practical recommendations for therapeutic practice, they are tentative and speculative unless mental health professionals are willing to test them and report the outcomes. Just like metaphors themselves, the techniques proposed in this book cannot be simplistically regarded as catch-all mechanisms applicable to all patient types. Much work still lies ahead in (in)validating, fine-tuning, and determining the circumstances under which different strategies of using and managing metaphors are most effective. I would now like conclude by making a final suggestion regarding the advancement of collaboration between linguists and psychotherapists, as conceived at its onset. One plausible and forward-looking idea might be to start from the formative years of the latter group in particular. At the University of Otago, New Zealand where I received my doctorate from the present research, students of clinical psychology are required to pass an introductory course on Māori language and culture, regardless of their own linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The likely rationale for this is the need for a basic understanding of the cultural dispositions they will encounter when working with patients who identify themselves as Māori (Metge & Kinlock, 1978). However, just as successful psychotherapy demands not merely general interpersonal skills, but technical knowledge of psychological conditions, psychotherapists should aspire towards more than a shared understanding of linguistic and cultural conventions, and ascend to a level of analytical understanding of the ongoing verbal communication between patients and themselves. Alongside the increasing interest in applying discourse analytic methods

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in psychological and psychotherapeutic research (Avdi & Georgaca, 2007; Crowe & Luty, 2005; Edwards, 1997; Madill & Barkham, 1997), it thus seems prudent to include some form of discourse analytic training into the professional development of clinical psychologists (Harper, O’connor, Self, & Stevens, 2008; J. Ponterotto, 2005; Spong, 2009). Focusing on the present interest in metaphors, a minimum prerequisite for successfully employing the strategies and techniques proposed in this book would be the ability to quickly identify instances, or potential instances of metaphoric talk. Familiarisation with theoretical notions like source/target domains and mappings should be most helpful. Further training in other aspects of metaphor theory such as those highlighted in this book can also be considered. In closing, while many people simply “live by” metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), some may find themselves getting to live well by them. Psychotherapy provides a critical context where our ongoing discoveries about language, cognition and culture can be applied for the betterment of human lives. Therefore, psychotherapeutic discourse should not just be a harvest ground for metaphor researchers seeking new horizons to validate their theories, but a site of plentiful sowing as well.

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Name index

A Abdulmoneim, Mohamed S.  1, 17 Abernethy, Alexis D.  25, 42, 44 Ahammed, Shaima  5, 25, 44 Alejo, Rafael  19 Allbritton, David W.  36, 105 Alverson, Hoyt  24–25, 67 Amira, S. A.  43 Amundson, Norman E.  4 Andersen, Tom  134, 183 Anderson, Harlene  5, 25, 50 Anderson, John R.  26 Anderson, Michael  18 Angus, Lynne E.  41–42, 56, 106, 110 Argaman, Einav  36, 129 Arlow, J. A.  3 Aronov, Neil E.  129–131, 142, 147 Asp, Elissa D.  174 Avdi, Evrinomy  182 B Baker, Paul  10 Balaban, Noga  36–37, 105 Barbey, Aron K.  19 Barkham, Michael  182 Barlow, Jack  3, 42–43 Barsalou, Lawrence W.  19, 23 Bartsch, Renate  21 Beardsley, Monroe C.  17 Beck, Aaron T.  41, 124 Beck, Judith S.  4 Beesdo-Baum, Katja  51 Benne, K. D.  145 Berch, Daniel B.  22 Bernárdez, Enrique  23–24 Bettelheim, Bruno  42, 68 Bharati, Agehananda  24 Black, Max  8, 17, 134 Blakemore, Diane  82 Blenkiron, Paul  42, 82, 94, 106

Bloor, Michael  9 Boroditsky, Lera  19, 26, 28 Boronat, Consuelo B.  37 Bowdle, Brian F.  26, 31–32, 87, 91 Boyd, Richard  77 Boylstein, Craig  144 Bradford, L. P.  145 Brandell, Jerrold R.  175 Brennan, Susan E.  50 Brewer, William F.  15, 23 Briles, T. M.  77 Brodsky, Stanley L.  129–131, 142, 147 Brown, Penelope  165 Bruscia, Kenneth E.  178 Burns, George W.  42, 106, 164, 175 Butler, Andrew C  124 C Caballero, Rosario  2, 13, 175 Caballo, V. E.  128 Cameron, Lynne  2–4, 7, 13, 23– 25, 27, 36, 38–40, 48, 63, 87, 94, 96, 105–107, 112, 133–134, 146, 149–151, 166, 174, 176 Cardillo, Eileen R.  31 Carlson, Jon  42, 164, 172 Carrey, Normand  42 Carter, Ronald  149 Case, Caroline  178 Cavalcanti, Marilda C  2 Cervel, M. Sandra Peña  34 Chaika, Elaine  4 Chamberlain, Kerry  4 Chang, Jeffrey 180 Chang, Suk-Choo  15 Channell, Joanna  164 Chapman, Jason E.  124 Charteris-Black, Jonathan  8, 134 Chilton, Paul  19, 24, 48–49 Chiu, Angela  147

Cienki, Alan  19, 72, 164 Cirillo, Leonard  38, 106–107 Claiborn, Charles D.  7, 125 Clark, Andy  18 Clark, Herbert H.  50 Clay, Allison L.  4 Clore, Gerald L.  19 Conway, John B.  42, 71 Corts, Daniel P.  36 Coulson, Seana  11, 34–35 Craine, Michael H.  41, 68 Craw, Michael J.  38, 47, 68–69, 72–74, 76, 95–97, 106, 108 Crawley, Richard J.  42, 178 Crider, Cathleen  38, 106–107 Crowe, Marie  9, 182 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly  55 Csordas, Thomas  24 Cummings, Anne L.  41 Cutting, Joan  164–165 D D’Andrade, Roy G.  20 Dalley, Tessa  178 Danehy, John J.  9 Daniels, M. Harry  4 Davies, Mark  59 Dawkins, Richard  77–79 de Villiers, Jessica  174 Deignan, Alice  2–3, 7–8, 23, 38–40, 48, 94, 112, 149–151, 166, 176–177 DeRubeis, Robert J.  147 DeVos, George A.  66 DiGuiseppe, Raymond A.  41 Dirven, René  23 Dodge, Ellen  19–20 Donnelly, Carol M.  41 Donovan, Dennis M.  66 Dorst, Aletta  11 Drapeau, Martin  42 Drew, Paul  38, 119, 175

206 Metaphor in Psychotherapy

F Falkenhainer, Brian  32 Fauconnier, Gilles  26, 33–35, 59 Feldman, Gerald  19–20 Fernandez, James W.  29, 96 Ferrara, Kathleen W.  9–11, 14–15, 52, 56, 98, 107, 116, 175, 177 Feyaerts, Kurt  22, 29 Fine, Harold  3 Fine, Jonathan  63, 175 Fischer, Kerstin  40, 152, 163 Foley, Elizabeth J.  22 Fonkert, Dick  9 Forbus, Kenneth D.  32 Forceville, Charles  19, 21, 55, 164, 178 Forman, Evan M.  124 Forrest, Linda  50 Fox Tree, Jean E  93, 117, 151, 155 Frank, Jerome D.  4, 55, 181 Frank, Roslyn M.  23–24 Fraser, Bruce  7, 40, 78, 149, 151 Freud, Sigmund  13, 15, 41, 55 Friedman, Barbara  96 Froriep, K. A.  77

Geertz, Clifford  71 Gentner, Dedre  19, 21, 26, 28, 31–32, 37, 77, 87, 91 Gentner, Donald R.  21, 77 Georgaca, Eugenie  182 Gerrig, Richard J.  36 Geurts, Kathryn  24 Gevaert, Caroline  22 Gibb, Heather  30, 32 Gibbons, Thomas  36 Gibbs, Raymond Jr.  1–2, 11, 20, 23–26, 28, 35–36, 48, 67, 90, 105, 174 Giora, Rachel  31 Glenberg, Arthur M.  20 Gloster, Andrew T.  51 Glucksberg, Sam  6, 21, 26, 28–32, 39, 88, 127, 158 Goatly, Andrew  7, 15, 37–39, 105–107, 110, 113, 149–150 Goddard, Cliff  22 Golding, Jonathan M.  30 Gomberg, Edith S. L.  66 Goncalves, Oscar F.  41, 43, 68 Goodman, Paul  124 Goodyear, Rodney K.  7, 125 Goolishian, Harry  5, 25, 50 Gordon, Cynthia  42 Goss, Steve  177 Gotay, Carolyn C.  19 Grady, Joseph  11, 18, 33–34, 125–126, 180 Graesser, Arthur C.  30 Green, Melanie  29 Greenberg, Leslie  155 Greenberger, Dennis  124 Greeno, James  24 Gregory, Monica E  32 Gries, Stefan T  39, 177 Grondelaers, Stefan  22, 63, 177 Gross, D. A.  66 Gubrium, Jaber F.  9 Guidano, Vittorio. F.  41, 80 Gumperz, John J.  149, 156, 164

G Gale, Jerry E.  176 Gardner, Howard  1 Gardner, Rod  152 Gee, James P.  15, 123, 180 Geeraerts, Dirk  22, 63, 177

H Haley, Jay  65 Hallberg, Ernest T.  41 Halliday, Michael A. K.  174–175 Harkins, Jean  22 Harper, David J.  182

Drewery, Wendy  47, 60–61 Dumas, Jean E.  41 Duncan, Barry L.  145 Durham, Deborah  29 Dwairy, Marwan  25, 42, 44, 47, 66–68, 74 E Edwards, Derek  182 Eells, Tracy D.  47 Elkins, David N.  133 Emanatian, Michele  24 Erickson, Milton H.  42, 68, 106 Eubanks, Philip  2, 105 Evans, Mark B.  41, 43 Evans, Vyvyan  17–18, 29 Evola, Vito  13, 178

Haser, Verena.  19, 29 Hayes, Steven C.  5, 44 Hefferline, Ralph  124 Heidegger, Martin  24 Hekkert, Paul  21 Hellsten, Iina  15, 48, 142, 144 Hill, C. E  42, 44 Hill, Rebecca J.  22 Hinojosa, Ramon  144 Hockett, Charles F.  9 Hoey, Michael  49 Hofmann, Stefan G.  176 Holland, Dorothy  20 Horvath, Adam  155 Howard, George S.  177 Howe, James  20–21, 105 Hsu, Francis L. K.  66 Hunt, Eva  24 Hutchins, Edward  24 Hwang, Kwang-Kuo  180 I Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide  1, 17 Imai, Mutsumi  19 Ingram, Douglas H.  41 Ivey, Allen E.  43 J Jackendoff, Ray  28 Jacquette, Dale  77 Jakes, Simon  180 Jasper, karin  41 Jefferson, Gail  11 Jensen de López, Kristine  21 Johnson, Christopher  18 Johnson, Mark  1, 4, 11, 15, 17–18, 20, 23–24, 43, 48, 52, 61, 70, 88, 108, 125–126, 151, 182 Jucker, Andreas  155 K Kasparov, Garry  83–84 Kecskes, Istvan  19 Keenan, Janice M.  30 Keesing, Roger  20 Keller-Cohen, Deborah  42 Kellert, Stephen H.  77 Kennedy, John M.  20 Kerlin, James  43 Kestenbaum, G. I.  136 Keysar, Boaz  26, 28–29, 32, 39

Name index 207



Kimmel, Michael  15, 24, 37, 67, 105, 107, 110, 114 Kinlock, Patricia  181 Kirmayer, Laurence J.  4, 24 Kittay, Eva F.  38 Koller, Veronika  8, 19 Kopp, Richard R.  3–4, 7, 10, 38, 42–43, 47, 51–52, 54–55, 63, 68–69, 72–74, 76, 80, 95–97, 104, 106, 108, 144 Korman, Yifaht  42 Kornreich, Melvin  3 Kottler, Jeffrey A  42, 164, 172 Kövecses, Zoltan  6–7, 14–15, 19–20, 23–24, 34–36, 44, 49, 81, 111, 121, 125, 134 Krennmayr, Tina  11 Kreuz, Roger J.  30 Kris, Ernst  177 Kuhn, Thomas S.  1 Kuusisto, Riikka  19 L Lacan, Jacques  41 Lachman, Max  25, 80 Lakoff, George  1, 4, 6, 11, 14–15, 17–20, 23–24, 26, 38, 43, 48, 52, 55, 61, 70, 88, 124–126, 142, 149, 151, 182 Lakoff, Robin  149 Lambert, Michael J.  3, 125, 145 Langacker, Ronald W.  27 Lankton, Carol H.  68 Lankton, Stephen  42, 68 Larsen-Freeman, Diane  48 Larson, Brendon  49 Leahy, Robert L.  128 Lenk, Uta  149, 151 Lenrow, Peter B.  13, 41 Lepper, Georgia  13, 42–43 LeShan, Lawrence  59 Levinson, Stephen C.  165 Lewis, Bradley  9 Lippitt, R.  145 Long, Philipa S.  13, 42–43 Loue, Sana  42, 106, 164, 172 Low, Graham  3, 38, 92, 94 Lyddon, William J.  4, 175 M Maalej, Zouhair  24

MacLaury, Robert E.  4 Madill, Anna  182 Magliano, Joe  50 Magnavita, Jeffrey J.  43 Mahoney, Michael J.  4 Mandler, Jean M.  18 Marsella, Anthony J.  66 Martin, Jack  41, 44 Martin, James H.  26 Martin, James R.  175 Matsuki, Keiko  19 Matthiessen, Christian M.  174 McAdams, Dan P.  66 McCarthy, Michael  149, 165 McCurry, Susan M.  5, 44 McGlone, Matthew S.  6, 19, 21, 26, 29–31, 88, 127, 158 McKeganey, Neil  9 McKoon, Gail  30, 36 McManus, Freda  146 McMullen, Linda M.  4, 13–15, 41–44, 71, 73, 118, 149, 156 McNamara, Danielle S.  50 McNeill, David  164 Mearns, Dave  177 Meier, Brian P.  19, 28 Meltzoff, Julian  3 Mendoza, Ruiz de  34 Mergenthaler, Erhard  148, 177 Mergler, Nancy L.  32 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice  24 Metge, Joan  181 Miller, Jim  152 Miller, Scott D.  145 Mills, Joyce C.  42, 178 Mirowski, Philip  77 Moon, Rosamund  38 Müller, Cornelia  19, 164 Muran, J. Christopher  41 Murphy, Gregory L.  28 Musolff, Andreas  3, 24, 48, 144 Mylne, Tom  22 N Nayak, Nandini P.  28, 30, 36, 105 Neimeyer, Robert A.  4, 25 Nichols, Sallie  178 Niedenthal, Paula M.  19 Nishizono, Masahisa  15 Noordman, Leo  36 Norcross, John C.  4

Núñez, Rafael  19–20 O O’connor, Julia  182 O’Keefe, Anne  149 Oakley, Todd  11 Ochs, Elinor  15, 40, 152, 163 Ogles, Ben M.  3 Ortony, Andrew  28 Ozawa-de Silva, Chikako  180 P Padesky, Christine  124 Palmer, Gary  24 Panther, Klaus-Uwe  6 Papp, Peggy  178 Paradise, Louis V.  180 Perls, Frederick  124 Pinker, Steven  20 Pittenger, Robert E.  9 Pollio, Howard  3, 43 Ponterotto, Diane  36, 50, 106 Ponterotto, Joseph G.  182 Potts, George R.  30 Pragglejaz Group  11, 43, 134 Prochaska, James O.  4 Pu, Ming Ming  50 Q Quinn, Naomi  2, 15, 20–21, 37, 105 Quintilian 36 R Radden, Gunter  6 Radley, Alan  4 Rakovshik, Sarah G.  146 Rasmussen, Brian  41 Ratcliff, Roger  30 Regan, A. M.  42, 44 Rennie, David L.  42, 106, 110 Rhodes, John E.  180 Richards, I. A.  1, 16 Ricoeur, Paul  80 Rigazio-Digilio, Sandra A.  43 Riikonen, Eero  14 Riskind, John H.  19 Ritchie, David  2, 15, 20, 22–23, 35, 49 Rittman, Maude  144 Robinson, Jessica  180

208 Metaphor in Psychotherapy

Robinson, Michael D.  19 Roe, David  25, 80 Rogers, Carl R.  52, 55, Rohrer, Tim  49 Ronen, Tammie  124, 127, 129, 132 Rosenbaum, Michael  124, 127, 129, 132 Rossi, Ernest  42, 68, 106 Rowat, Ronda  42 Rubin, David C.  15, 23 S Sacks, Harvey  11 Safran, Jeremy D.  115, 124, 147 Sanders, Ted  36 Santarpia, A.  67 Sarkar, Sameer P.  92 Scheflen, Albert E.  9 Schegloff, Emmanuel  11 Schiffrin, Deborah  7, 40, 82, 149, 151–152, 159, 161–163 Schmidt, Gwenda L.  31 Schourup, Lawrence  151, 155, 164 Schrock, Josef C.  93, 117, 151, 155 Scott, Mike  145, 177 Searle, John  1, 17 Segal, Zindel V.  124, 147 Self, Phlip  182 Seligman, Martin  55 Semetsky, Inna  178 Semino, Elena  4, 11, 36, 40, 78, 124, 129 Sharpe, Ella F.  13, 42, 68 Shen, Yeshayahu  36–37, 105 Shinebourne, Pnina  25, 49 Shogimen, Takashi  19 Shore, Bradd  24 Siegelman, Ellen Y.  3, 42, 44, 68, 97 Silverman, David  5 Silverstein, Michael  163 Sims, Peter A.  76, 95–97, 101– 102, 104, 106, 108, 178 Sinclair, John  39 Sinha, Chris  21, 24 Slingerland, Edward  19 Smith, Jonathan A.  25, 49, 155 Smith, Sarah  25, 49, 155 Sommers-Flanagan, John  112

Sommers-Flanagan, Rita  112 Sparks, Cheri L.  4 Speelman, Dirk  177 Sperber, Daniel  17 Spong, Sheila  182 Spooren, Wilbert  36 Steen, Gerard  3, 11, 16, 26–27, 35, 73, 76, 87, 153–154 Stefano, Jack D.  42 Stefanowitsch, Anatol  39, 177 Stine, John J.  41 Stott, Richard  3, 5, 41–42, 70, 102, 129, 164, 176 Strauss, Claudia  2, 15, 31 Strong, Tom  25 Strunk, Daniel R.  147 Stuart, Jennifer J.  42 Suit, James L.  180 Sweetser, Eve E.  19–20 T Tabor-Morris, A. E.  77 Tan, Ed  21 Tay, Dennis  47, 75, 123, 149, 178 Taylor, John R.  4, 18–19, 22, 29 Teasdale, John D.  5, 13, 42 Todd, Zazie  3 Tomasello, Michael  24 Tomlin, Russell S.  50 Tseng, Wen-Shing  15 Turner, Mark  26, 33–35, 59 Tyler, Andrea  18 U Underhill, Robert  152 Urios-Aparisi, Eduardo  19, 164, 178 V Van der Hart, Onno  178 Vataja, Sara  14 Vervaeke, John  20 Vygotsky, Lev S.  24 W Wales, Roger  32 Wallis, Patrick  49 Watson, Christine E.  31 Wee, Lionel  6, 15, 21, 25–27, 39–40, 66, 70, 75–77, 79, 83, 87, 94, 104, 129, 151–152, 157

Weinberger, Joel  176 Weinert, Regina  152 White, Geoffrey M.  66 White, Lyle J.  4 White, Michael  19 Whynot, Christopher A.  76, 95–97, 101–102, 106, 108, 178 Wickman, Scott A.  4, 41–43 Wierzbicka, Anna  22 Wilson, Deidre  17 Wilson, Margaret  18 Wilson, Nicole L.  90 Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich  51 Witztum, Eliezer  96 Wohl, Julian  14, 179 Wolff, Philip  32 Wolk, Daniel P.  22 Y Yamaguchi, Masataka  15, 47, 112, 163 Yu, Ning  1, 17, 19, 24, 35 Z Zanotto, Mara S.  2 Zebian, Samar  22 Ziemke, Tom  23 Zindel, Bonnie  25, 41, 49 Zinken, Jörg  3, 15, 24, 38, 48–49, 125, 144, 174 Zlatev, Jordan  24 Zucker, Robert A.  66

Subject index

A Agency  47, 61, 64, 73, 110, 139 Agentic position  61 Agentive  60–61, 63 Agoraphobia  51, 72, 74 Analogy  78–79, 94, 130, 167, 169, see also extended metaphor Art  2, 54, 84, 176 Autobiographical memories  15, 23, see also individual experience and knowledge B Behavioural analysis  26, 76 Biopsychosocial model  47, 66 Bipolar disorder  80–81, 88, 128 Boundary violation  91–92 C Cognitive reality  2, 11 Cognitivist approach to metaphor  2, 4, 11, 18, 22, 27–29, 31, 36–38, 43, 67, 105, 120 Communication (of metaphor) 95,164, 181 Common factor  4 Complex metaphor  20 Conceptual domain  1, 29, 33 Source domain  17, 27, 31, 34–35, 72, 77, 79, 82, 85–86, 90–91, 93, 100–103, 111, 129–130, 139, 158, 160, 162 Source concept  6, 25, 37, 90, 100, 106–108, 110–114, 118, 120, 161, 165 Target domain  11, 17, 27, 35, 74, 77, 80, 82, 84, 86, 90–91, 93–94, 100–103, 130, 139, 147, 158–159

Target concept  6, 16, 23, 25, 31, 71, 100, 108, 110, 151, 153, 161 Target topic  52, 106–107, 112–113, 117, 120 Conceptual metaphor  7, 11, 17, 18–24, 28, 30, 32, 35–39, 43, 50, 67, 105, 123, 125–126, 129–130, 134, 142–144, 147, 178 see also cognitivist approach to metaphor Conceptual structures  2, 28, 33, 67 see also conceptual metaphor Construction of metaphor  7, 16, 47, 51, 68, 123, 152, 179 of meaning  106–107,119, 121, 173, 175 Constructivism  4, 80 Construal  4, 52, 56, 64, 68, 71, 83, 88, 123, 125, 129, 135, 143, 148, 160, 179 Container schema  18–19, 49, 52, 55–56, 59–61, 63–66, 71–72, see also image schema Contemporary Theory of Metaphor 1 Contextual dimension  3, see also layers of context Contextual characteristics  14 Contextualisation cues  164 Conventional metaphors  29, 32, 35, 37, 48, 55, 134, 150, 181 Co-occurrence 15, 16, 18, 39–40, 156, 163–166 Co-text  6–7, 14–16, 38–39, 95, 117, 134, 139, 149–151, 163, 165, 173 Corpus based  8, 91,151 Corpus driven  8 Cultural model  21–22

D Descriptive aim  6–7, 13, 40, 75, 82, 107, 121, 171–173 Descriptive analysis, see descriptive aim Discourse passim Discourse with a big D  180 Discourse community  7, 11, 15–16, 35, 38, 121, 142, 144 Discourse strategy  27, 75, 79, 87, 105, 110, 114, 157–158 Discourse metaphor  25, 123, 125, 131–132, 174, see also framing device Discourse derivative  76 Discourse objective  6, 11, 15–16, 24–25, 27, 35, 40, 45, 60, 75, 77, 79, 83, 87–88, 91, 93–94, 104, 121, 126, 149, 151–153, 157, 166, 173–174 Discourse markers  7, 16, 40, 82, 149–159, 161, 163–166, 172 Discourse and conversational coherence  50, 90, 106, 151 Discursive representation 40, 163 E Efficacy  5, 41, 44, 65, 67–68, 82, 145, 176 Elaboration of metaphor  7, 47, 50, 60, 64, 76, 87–88, 93, 95, 100, 128, 130, 158, see also co-elaboration, extended metaphor Embodiment  18–20, 23–25, 47, 66, 70, 73, 175 Embodied correlation  22–23 Embodied cognition  18, 23, see also embodiment Emotional states  4, 11, 42

210 Metaphor in Psychotherapy

Experience and knowledge Embodied  6, 15, 16, 18–20, 23–24, 43, 49, 52, 60–61, 64–66, 68, 70–72, 143, see also embodiment Individual  6, 20, 23–25, 43, 47, see also idiosyncratic Socio-cultural  6, 15, 24, 43, 48, 52, 64–65, see also socio-cultural situatedness Extended metaphor  151–152, 157–158, 161, 165, see also analogy F Feedback  7–8,125, 132, 134, 145–148, 172 Framing device  15, 38, 48, 126, 128–129, 148 Functional analysis  26, 76 Functional complementarity  64, 68, 123, 144, 173 G Genre study  8 Genre-based study  8 Gesture  19, 164–165, 178 H Heuristic frame  123–125, 127, 134, 144, 147, see also framing device I Idealised cognitive model (ICM) 124–125 Ideational resource  22, 52, 178, see also source domain/ concept Idiosyncratic (experiences, conceptual materials)  23, 50, 53, 55, 59–60, 65, 176, 178 Image schema  18–19, 21, 25, 48–49, 52, 59–61, 64–66, 70–74, 108,114 Image schematic cues  60, 70–72, 74, see also image schema Individual conceptual fields  22–23, 73, see also individual experience and knowledge

Inferential logic  18, 56, 66, 106, 118, 121 Inferential patterns  47, 49, 128 Information state transition  152, 161–162 Interactional dynamics  39, 45, 163, 176 L Layers of context  6, 13–14, 179 Literal (language, expressions) 4, 17, 21, 22, 28, 32, 38–39, 63, 80, 91, 102, 117, 149, 154, 156 M Maladaptive  3, 180 Maladjustive 3 Meaning conjunction  106, 110, 120 Meaning disjunction  106, 120 Mechanism (of therapeutic change)  5, 13, 41, 44–45, 176 Metaphor keys  134 Metaphor passim Definition and identification 11 Metaphor theory  1, 3, 5–6, 8, 13–14, 16, 26, 38, 42–45, 67, 142, 151, 171–172, 174, 182 Metaphor use and management 3, 5–7, 13–14, 43, 92, 171–172, 176 Communicative approach  42 Interpretive approach  42 Interview protocol  48, 68–69, 72–74, 95–97, 103 Metaphoricity  7, 11, 17, 32, 39–40, 63, 67, 134, 150–152, 156–157, 166, 178 Metaphoric scenario  11, 50, 52, 59–60, 64, 69–70, 73, 82, 91, 97, 106, 110, 121, 178 Methodological pluralism  27, 76 Metaphoric coherence principle 36–37 Mental representation  36, 50, 60, 75 Metaphor signalling  7, 39–40, 76, 149–153, 156–157, 163, 166

Metaphor tuning  39–40, 112, 149–150, 152, 157, 166, 181 Metaphoric Constancy/consistency  16, 35–28, 105–108, 110, 118–121, 126, 132, 134, 142, 144, 175 Variability  2, 7, 35–38, 47, 105– 108, 110, 112–113, 115–121, 123, 154, 172–173, 175 Multivalency  107, 110–112 Diversification of grounds 37, 107, 113–114 Variation  7, 11, 16, 35–38, 121, 125, 129, 132, 134, 142, 144, 172–173 Mixed metaphors  36 Modalities (non-linguistic)  19, 55, 164, 178 Motivation of metaphor  6, 125, 142 N Neurobiological  19, 20, 67 Non-coercive ideal  44, 68, 97 Novel metaphors  29, 31, 33, 37, 43, 156 P Paradigm shift  1 Positive psychology  55 Prescriptive aim  6–8, 13, 25, 40, 47, 49, 66, 70, 73, 94, 106–108, 119, 121, 125, 139, 144–145, 150, 163–164, 171–173, 177, 181 Prescriptive analysis, see prescriptive aim Primary metaphor  18, 20, 125–126 Problem-solution framework  6, 47, 49, 52, 56, 61, 64, 66, 73, 121 Processing models  25–27, 75–76, 87, 91, 94 Correspondence 26–32, 34, 75–78, 81, 83, 86, 88, 90–91, 94, 101, 141, 149, 152, 157, 165 Cross-domain  7, 30, 34, 79, 96, 149, 153, 165 Isomorphism  32, 77

Subject index 211



Class inclusion  26–32, 75–76, 83, 91 Superordinate category  7, 29, 33, 79, 82–83, 149 Categorisation  31–32, 43 Career-of-metaphor 26, 30–32, 87 Conceptual blending  26, 33–34, 81, 139 Psychoanalysis  13, 41 Dream analysis  55 Psycholinguistic models  6, 25 see also processing models Psychotherapy passim Definition 3 Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy  4, 124, 128 Gestalt therapy  124, 134 Relational Therapy  4, 115, 124 Negative outcomes  180 R Research approaches Qualitative  8, 39, 42–43, 150, 177 Quantitative  8, 39, 42, 119, 177

Retrojection 67 Rhetorical Strategy  6, 84 Extension of metaphors  6, 123 Development of metaphors 15, 25, 75 S Scales of therapeutic activity  174 Sensorimotor  18, 24, 126, see also embodiment Simile  32, 150 Socio-cultural situatedness  23 Source-target (relationships) 6, 17, 23, 25–27, 29–30, 35, 39, 75, 77, 91, 93–94, 97, 104, 107–108, 120–121, 152–153, 166 Stabilities in metaphoric discourse  48–49, 66 Stock metaphors  42, 94, 164 Strategic juncture  7, 40, 149, 152–153, 157–158, 160–161, 163, 165–166, 172–173 Systemic-functional linguistics 175 Metafunctions 174

T Therapeutic alliance/ collaboration Alliance 155–156 Collaborative  41, 56, 60, 64, 68, 98, 120, 124, 127–129, 131–132, 134, 136, 143, 145, 165, 174–176 Collaboration  4, 47, 106, 131, 138, 181 Co-elaboration  106, 108, 120 Impasse  71, 134–136 Rapport  4, 165 Time machine technique  59 Trajectory of metaphor development  33, 94, 97–98, 100 Training model  125, 129, 133, 142–143, 146–148 U Universality  20, 22, 121 W Wall metaphor  51–52, 59–60, 65, 68, 96