Metaphor Therapy

Metaphor Therapy introduces two important new methods for using metaphor as an intervention technique in psychotherapy - both involving client-generated metaphors, rather than the traditional metaphoric intervention suggested by the therapist. It will also enable the therapist to access and employ the client's own insight to stimulate positive growth and change.

Written as a training manual for professionals, this book provides a step-by-step process for learning two specific approaches to client-generated metaphoric intervention. The first involves exploring and transforming the client's metaphoric language. The second focuses on exploring and transforming the client's early memory metaphors.

In addition to outlining how a client-generated intervention is accomplished, the book examines specific skills that will help the therapist become more successful in these interventions.

Practitioners will also find that the client-generated metaphor therapy described in the book is sensitive to culture, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, making it ideally suited for working with diverse populations.

In addition, both methods are compatible with a wide range of therapeutic modalities and orientations, including individual, couples, and family therapy; psychodynamic therapy; cognitive-behavioral therapy; humanist-existential therapy; and family systems therapy, in either brief or long-term approaches.

Finally, the book explores the role of the linguistic, cognitive, sensory-affective, and neuropsychological processes that contribute to the therapeutic changes resulting from a client-generated metaphor.