Metaphor in Psychoanalysis: Bane or Blessing?

Since the 1980 book, The Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson, the cognitive-linguistic view of metaphor that they propound has come to be most widely accepted. Its characteristic features are that (a) metaphor is a property of the concept, not the words; (b) its function is to heighten under...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPsychoanalytic inquiry Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 90 - 106
Main Author Wallerstein, Robert S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Taylor & Francis Group 14.03.2011
Laurence Erlbaum Associates
Taylor & Francis Inc
Subjects
Aesthetics
Cognition & reasoning
Linguistics
Mental health
Metaphor
Psychoanalysis
Speech
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Summary:Since the 1980 book, The Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson, the cognitive-linguistic view of metaphor that they propound has come to be most widely accepted. Its characteristic features are that (a) metaphor is a property of the concept, not the words; (b) its function is to heighten understanding, not simply artistic or aesthetic; (c) it is often not based on similarity; (d) it is ubiquitous in ordinary language, not requiring special talent; and (e) it is an inevitable intrinsic aspect of all human thought and language. This is true of all speech, including the speech in and of psychoanalysis. Metaphor both amplifies and creates meaning. But it can also be misleading and produce conceptual errors of meaning. It should, therefore, not be reified or always taken literally, but should remain flexible and alterable, so that heuristically more relevant and more encompassing metaphor can readily be elaborated.
ISSN:0735-1690
1940-9133
DOI:10.1080/07351690.2010.515525