Enacting Metaphors in Systemic Collaborative Therapy

Metaphors are effective therapeutic tools because they connect to action words, allowing a client's embodiment and agency to be explored within dialog. Drawing on embodied, enactive, and ecological ideas, the authors propose a dialogical-enactive account in which metaphors are used to enact change in systemic collaborative therapy. Rather than requiring explicit performances, metaphoric engagement stays within linguistic dialog as an act of participatory sense-making. Two examples with adolescents illustrate how enacting metaphors in shared communication helps clients connect to action and explore their own agency. Talking is seen as a form of doing, unfolding through embodied interaction.

Study at a glance

Abstract

What makes metaphors good therapeutic tools? In this paper, we provide an answer to this question by analyzing how metaphors work in systemic collaborative therapeutic practices. We look at the recent embodied, enactive and ecological proposals to metaphors, and provide our own, dialogical-enactive account, whereby metaphors are tools for enacting change in therapeutic dialogs. We highlight the role of enacting metaphors in therapy, which is concerned with how one uses the metaphors in shared process of communication. Our answer is that metaphors serve as good tools for connecting to action words, through which the client’s embodiment and agency can be explored. To illustrate our view, we analyze two examples of enacting metaphors in therapeutic engagements with adolescents. Our enactive proposal to metaphors is different from others as it does not rely on engaging in explicit performances but stays within a linguistic dialog. We take metaphoric engagement as an act of participatory sense-making, unfolding in the interaction. This insight stems from enactive ways of thinking about language as a process accomplished by embodied agents in interaction, and seeing talking also as a form of doing.