Metaphor and Meaning in Psychotherapy

In this intriguing work, Ellen Siegelman presents metaphor as a form of symbolization uniquely suited to bridging the known and unknown, the conscious and unconscious, the personal and universal. She demonstrates how metaphor, while drawing upon one's most concrete bodily experience, points to an immensely rich area of imaginative life. The work offers an abundance of clinical data to illustrate how metaphor is a principle medium for creating the unconscious interpersonal resonances that lie at the heart of the psychotherapeutic process, including the metaphors inherent in transference and countertransference.Siegelman shows how a metaphor, when fostered, can lead directly to unconscious sources and how a single metaphor can become a telegraphic symbol of the self. She also discusses the mistakes a therapist can make in pursuing or ignoring metaphors. Case vignettes, drawn from her own extensive clinical work and from the literature, are presented throughout. Adding a moment-to moment immediacy, the cases illustrate how figures of speech can be used to illuminate defenses and increase the depth of a therapy or analysis. In the concluding section, the topic is opened outward to include metaphors of the psychotherapeutic process itself--how such theorists as Freud, Jung, Langs, Milner, and Winnicott have viewed the therapeutic space. A final chapter anchors the book in its larger context--that of symbolic attitude, which the author believes is the bedrock on which all schools of depth psychotherapy are constructed.