TPC Journal V7, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

148 The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 2 Counselor-Generated Metaphors Counselor-generated metaphors involve the use of metaphors to intentionally support the therapeutic process. The application of metaphors by counselors can occur through the reintroduction of metaphors first generated by clients but with changes to support therapeutic growth, or the sharing of new metaphors as a way to help clients recognize thoughts, feelings and behaviors, or understand and integrate new concepts and behaviors (Millikin & Johnson, 2000; Tay, 2012; Wickman et al., 1999). The metaphors may be short and involve a very clear target and source domain, or they can be as long and complex as stories. In addition, depending on a client’s ability to understand and recognize metaphor and the purpose for which the metaphor is intended, the exploration of the metaphor may be brief or more involved (Millikin & Johnson, 2000; Tay, 2012; Wickman et al., 1999). One specific type of introduced metaphor is the disquisition , a narrative form of metaphor (Millikin & Johnson, 2000). Disquisitions are stories that involve similar interactions and concerns as those of clients because they are developed or adopted specifically for the therapeutic needs of the client. These stories take many forms, including fictional stories of other clients in counseling and fairy tale-type stories, though the stories need to closely relate to the client’s issue. The purpose of these stories is to normalize the client’s experience, increase insight, deepen emotions and facilitate new perspectives (Millikin & Johnson, 2000). This is a very deliberate therapeutic usage of metaphor that generally requires a reservoir of stories to draw from for particular situations or the very adaptive and creative generation of appropriate stories. Another approach is to use client-generated metaphors as a starting place for generating therapeutic, counselor-adapted metaphors. The appeal to this approach is the direct connection of client conceptualizations, represented within their metaphors, to new concepts through metaphoric imagery. With the introduction of this type of metaphor, it is often necessary to help clients reformulate relationships from the original metaphor to the new metaphor. This reformulation may be used in support of change that has occurred or as a tool to help clients generate new concepts and behaviors (Gelo & Mergenthaler, 2012; Tay, 2012; Wickman et al., 1999). As with disquisitions, this is also a very deliberate use of metaphor for specific therapeutic effect. Metaphors and Contraindications Before transitioning from approaches to using metaphors in counseling to the application of those approaches, it is important to briefly discuss whether metaphor-based approaches should be avoided with some types of clients or situations. A review of research produces no clear contraindications for using metaphors in client interventions, even with those experiencing psychotic disorders. In fact, a recent systematic review by Mould, Oades, and Crowe (2010) of 28 studies of clients with psychotic disorders found support for metaphors as a useful intervention with psychotic clients and describes metaphors as a tool for reorganizing clients’ cognitive understanding in a way that is grounded in reality. In addition, though metaphors seem to present a challenge for some individuals with learning disabilities and autism, interventions to help them understand metaphors have been successfully introduced into counseling (Mashal & Kasirer, 2011). It would be advisable to use caution when introducing metaphors in counseling and to tailor metaphor work to clients’ cognitive abilities and ability to evaluate reality, but with that said, there is no clear evidentiary reason precluding metaphor interventions across mental health diagnoses and therapies. In fact, metaphors are considered a ubiquitous and foundational aspect of cognitive and emotional processing and communication (Blasko, 1999; Evans, 2010; Steen et al., 2010; Tay, 2012).