The Language of Psychoanalysis METAPHOR: THE IMPOSSIBLE TRANSLATION? Terri Eynon ABSTRACT The linguistic concept `metaphor' has an established place in clinical as well as theoretical psychotherapy. It has been seen as analogous to or even fundamental to the analytic concept of transference. Metaphors have been thought to have a special role in enhancing therapist-patient communications. By contrast, in linguistics itself, metaphor has been relatively neglected, viewed as irrelevant and unscientific. That conventional approach to metaphor has recently been challenged by Contemporary Metaphor Theory. This new theory suggests that language depends upon a largely unconscious system of conventional metaphor. Our bodily experiences are the basis of our understanding of abstract concepts such as emotions and relationships. Novel and imaginative metaphors build upon this fundamental biological structure. The traditional approach placed metaphor, along with rhetoric and, by inference, psychodynamic thinking, at the periphery of science. Cognitive linguistic research is now showing that language is fundamentally structured by metaphorical processes, which enhances the scientific status of psychoanalysis and supports and extends the view of metaphor as at the heart of language and meaning. The butterfly's wings are becoming so heavy they touch the ground almost, they hit the hawthorn and get thrown sideways by the spray from the waterfall miles away. They no longer fold into land only fall splayed. The perceiving of what was familiar needs impossible translation. Every field rolling green has its beautiful crashed aeroplane. (David Hart, `Wings') Introduction Over recent years references to metaphor in the psychotherapy literature have testified to the special role of metaphor in therapist communications (Kopp 1995; Cox & Theilgaard 1997; Ogden 1997; Barker 1996) or have used the concept of metaphor as an analogue for transference (Holmes 1985). Metaphor is usually defined, in established terminology, as a special linguistic device in which one thing is described as if it is another. In a tradition that can be traced back through the centuries to Aristotle, the metaphorical is opposed to the literal. It is a proper part of poetry and rhetoric. Its function is to create novel meanings that inspire and disturb by changing our perspective on reality. The twentieth century's fascination with literalism and science, however, relegated metaphor to an intellectual second division. Psychotherapy, with its emphasis on the symbolic unconscious, did not find a problem with the status of metaphor. Whilst linguistics was aiming to become DR TERRI EYNON MRCPsych is Specialist Registrar in Psychotherapy at the Nottingham Psychotherapy Department, St Ann's House, Nottingham. Address for correspondence: 61 Melbourne Street, Coalville, Leics LE67 3QU. [email: alderoak@ntlworld.com] British Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol 17(3), 2001 © The author