The use of metaphor for understanding and managing psychotic experiences: A systematic review

Abstract

Background: Subjective experiences of psychotic disorders are often not communicated because of the difficulty in articulating them. Metaphor is a valuable way of describing these experiences to others. Recovery in psychotic disorders involves consolidation and transitioning processes. The ontological and orientational types of metaphor seem to form the linguistic basis of these processes.

Aims: The aim of this paper is to review and describe how metaphor may be used both as a strategy for people with psychotic disorders to articulate their subjective experiences of self, and also as an approach to support recovery.

Method: A systematic review of 28 studies was conducted, to examine the nature and function of metaphor used in studies involving an intervention or therapeutic method for psychosis.

Results: Sixteen studies contained first-person experiences, 24 studies used metaphor to consolidate the self of the person with psychotic disorder, and 19 studies used metaphor to transition the self of the person, although applied use of metaphor in this way was limited.

Conclusions: The use of metaphor as a strategy is a potentially valuable way for both people with psychotic disorders to express their experiences, and for promotion of recovery within this population.

Keywords:

• Psychotic disorders
• self experiences
• metaphor

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Acknowledgement

Our sincerest appreciation goes to the anonymous reviewers for their very useful contribution via helpful comments and editing.

Notes

1. The search term for therapeutic was truncated to therap*, to include all variations of the word, i.e., therapeutic, therapeutically, therapy, therapies, therapist.

2. Metaphor as an intervention/therapeutic method in psychosis included studies which carried out the intervention/therapeutic method, and also those which only spoke of the possible use of metaphor in this way.