Reconnecting Psychoanalysis to Mainstream Psychology: Metaphor as Glue

Abstract

In recent decades, psychoanalysts have examined the role of metaphor in psychodynamic theory and therapy, but the uses of metaphor in psychoanalytic research have received only modest attention. After briefly reviewing extant psychoanalytic writings on metaphor, we discuss how research from outside psychoanalysis (i.e., studies of embodied affect–space links, mental images and prototypes, and associative networks) can inform us about the nature of metaphor. We then explore the ways that metaphor deepens our understanding of psychodynamic research and its implications, focusing on metaphoric definitions of concepts, and the metaphoric features of experimental manipulations and outcome assessments. Implications of a metaphoric perspective for the empirical testing of psychoanalytic concepts are discussed, and future directions for exploration in this area are described.

Notes

Robert F. Bornstein, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology in the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University; Nikaya Becker-Matero, M.A., is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the Derner Institute.

¹Although numerous analytic writers have drawn upon studies from cognitive science to test and refine psychodynamic concepts, Michels (2005) pointed out that many constructs in contemporary cognitive science are flexible enough that they can be incorporated into extant psychodynamic frameworks without altering these frameworks in substantive ways (cf. Bucci, 1997).

²Behaviorists might argue that behavioral models—especially radical behavioral models—are metaphor-free, but they would be wrong. Myriad behavioral constructs (e.g., generalization, discrimination, unconditioned stimulus, avoidance learning, intermittent reinforcement) are to varying degrees metaphoric.

³PD researchers are not alone in their implicit equating of self-reports with the underlying variables assessed by self-report measures. Although the Five Factor Model (FFM; Costa and McCrae, 1997) is, far and away, the dominant model of personality in scientific psychology today, the vast majority of FFM studies rely exclusively on self-reports to assess personality as well as its correlates.