S. Montana Katz
The concept of metaphor was broadened beyond the verbal by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). As will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters, the concept of metaphoric process is an extension of this broadened view through the addition of temporal, developmental, and functional dimensions. A metaphoric process can be thought of as an unfolding of an unconscious trail, which includes and encodes emotional, procedural, dynamic, and other unconscious ingredients of experience.
Metaphor is often contrasted with the literal. Similarly, metaphoric processes might be seen in distinction from direct, reality-based experience. In the umbrella framework for psychoanalysis, these are relative terms. What is experienced as real is such as a result of the metaphoric processes that give rise to the experience. Thus, what emerges from metaphoric processes may become the (relatively) real of the future.
It is argued extensively in the preceding and subsequent chapters that metaphoric processes are inborn and involuntary. Metaphoric processes are essential to human life; that is, without the continuous, ongoing stream of metaphoric processes, there would be no human world. They are the means by which each individual has experience, learns, and understands. They are the way in which humans communicate, verbally and nonverbally, intrapsychically and intervivos. Metaphoric processes are already active in early childhood (Imbasciati, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006). These early processes persist as strands in processes throughout life. We might consider the unthought known to be involved in such strands.
Modell (2009a) describes metaphoric processes as mappings that involve similarity-and difference-seeking activity. When similarity is salient, repetition, including transference, may be involved and may be clinically observable. When difference is salient in the activity of an individual's metaphoric processes, conceptualization and thought are relatively absent, according to the degree of difference discerned. When the degree of difference is not extreme, resistance may be clinically in evidence. When the degree of difference is high, linking is barred and conceptualization cannot be perceived.
The idea that metaphoric processes are mappings is a simplifying heuristic proposition. Mappings can be thought of as occurring in segments of metaphoric processes. A manifold of mappings could be open to view in time slices of metaphoric processes. That is, a given metaphoric process will contain multiple mappings, each of which is modified over time in form as well as in salience. It could be said that metaphoric processes may be viewed as systems of mappings during any given time segment. In their entirety, however, they are not mappings themselves. To add more complexity, a conceptualization may (and will be likely to) involve more than one metaphoric process.
For example, a subject's conceptualization of an object will in general involve segments of several metaphoric processes. Together, these segments coalesce into a temporal conceptualization of the object. This means that, at a given point in time, contained within segments of a set of related metaphoric processes, there is a conceptualization of an object. This conceptualization exists with respect to certain salient aspects. Part of the conceptualization will necessarily involve aspects of conceptualizations of other objects, including primary objects. Mappings contained in this moment of metaphoric processes could be viewed as stemming from conceptualizations of earlier objects and being transferred to aspects of one of the current object.
An inaccuracy involved in this pertains to time and where in time the mappings that make up metaphoric processes are located. During a time slice in the present, the subject does not have direct access to past conceptualizations embedded in past segments of metaphoric processes. What the subject has are current reconceptualizations of the early conceptualizations, embedded in current segments of metaphoric processes together with associated affect patterns. In that slice, these are then mapped onto aspects of the current conceptualization.
To take an extreme example for the purposes of clarity, the time slices of metaphoric processes involved in very early preverbal experiences are not accessible as such. In fact, it is not likely that the concepts that were involved are discernible in the mappings in such metaphoric processes. The conceptualizations involved may be of a radically different nature than later experiences. What carry through are associated affect clusters, including the derivatives of self experiences.
Another inaccurate shorthand is that time progresses in a measured, linear fashion. Yet it is rarely experienced or psychoanalytically understood that way. Transference is a much-discussed case of both nonquantifable and nonlinear, lived time. Metaphoric processes can be heuristically thought of as coursing through the life of an individual in conventional time, yet one thing that is crucially plastic in such a metaphoric process is time. A past event, feeling, or experience is continually brought into the present in its rearticulation by means of newly acquired experience imported into the metaphoric process. These elements refer back to, reinvent, and restructure the experience of the past, as well as informing the experience of the present.
At every moment, metaphoric processes are based in that moment. From the salient metaphors of a given moment in the experience of a subject—including the current valences—the categories of experience, the organizing principles (Feirstein, 2009), the templates (Freud, 1912c), or the structure (Modell, 2009a; Katz, 2004) can be discerned. The early metaphoric processes of an individual, for example, may contain elements of the experience of the maternal environment. Active metaphoric processes need not form a mutually consistent set. Contradictions and paradoxes abound within the life span of an individual, and this can be represented by contemporaneous metaphoric processes containing conceptions and structures that conflict with each other. Within an individual, as with everything unconscious, a metaphoric process is lifelong. A single metaphoric process may be salient and active in and for the individual at certain points, moderately active other times, and relatively dormant at still others.
Metaphoric processes are continuously ongoing within a human being, and as Modell has described so clearly, they map from one domain to another, possibly dissimilar domain. Metaphor can be a form of transcendence, a mapping from the known, relatively real onto new conceptions of previous experience. This conception of metaphor is consistent with Arlow's (1969) discussion of fantasy in that metaphors are not only ongoing, but also provide the mental set with which humans function. Modell (1997a) states this similarly with respect to metaphor by saying that it is the currency of the mind. Freud, in his discussions of dreams and unconscious processes, emphasized visual components. Metaphor is multiperceptual. This includes multisensory elements as well as those of affect and conceptualization.
When a metaphoric process within which an individual is functioning can be discerned, one strand of a layer of his or her life comes into high relief. This strand can at times be perceived more or less consciously, and at others may be active solely in the unconscious. Multiple metaphoric processes are ongoing in an individual's life at all times and can merge, diverge, overlap, combine, contradict, and conflict with each other. Unlike Husserl's undifferentiated, universal stream of consciousness, there is an idiosyncratic, differentiated stream of metaphoric processes that continuously course through time.
While the concepts and constructions that an individual postulates are idiosyncratic, they are not incommunicable. A subject's experience and interpretations are unique, which is an essential premise of theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis. They are also largely unconscious. Unconscious individual heuristics are discoverable to consciousness through discourse with another (shapiro, 2005). This is made possible from at least two directions. First, the environment has an influence in shaping an individual's conceptions, from the earliest forms of his or her protothoughts and feelings. This normative conditioning occurs as part of the way that natural languages serve to carve human experience into discrete conceptualizations of the behavior of others—especially their highly repetitive behaviors common to many individuals and present in the value systems of populations.
From at least birth on, one begins to conceive of aspects of the world through social structuring, including by means of the acquisition of language. This means that, to a large extent, an individual processes experience by means of the conceptual apparatus of the primary language learned, and begins to do so possibly even prior to achieving language competence. That is, many of the concepts acquired or formed in early experience are derived from the way of carving up the world that is implicit and embedded in the language of primary caregivers. Thus, many of an individual's concepts—and thereby his or her expectations—are learned largely through the various media the individual encounters in the world.
To the same degree that humans could not survive without oxygen and water, they could also not survive without unconscious fantasy activity, and therefore not without ongoing metaphoric processes. Metaphoric processes are essential for the formation, acquisition, and development of concepts within an individual, a community, and the human race as a whole. They are required for the formation of languages and other forms of symbolic representation and communication. What we are aware of and can conceive of—objects, things, self, brains, bodies, minds, etc.—are arrived at through perception and are thus interpretations. In a manner of speaking, they exist as discrete entities to the extent that they are conceptualized as falling into categorizations.
For humans, a world without metaphoric processes would not be an impoverished world; it would be no world at all. Without the ongoing capacity for metaphoric processes, human experience would not be identifable, discernable, or even describable. All perception would devolve into discrete and unusable sensory impressions. Without metaphor, the potentially infnite amount of sensory input at any given moment would be a bombardment of particulars without any sort of filtration or conceptualization. There would be no patterns, no observations, no predications or predictions—in effect, nothing.
Modell has discussed aspects of situations in which the flow of metaphoric processes is diminished or restricted. Specifically, he has explored when and at which points the play of similarity and difference collapse into similarity-seeking processes only, resulting in a loss of the relatively free mobility of metaphor construction. Such cases eventuate in what Modell calls frozen metaphor—repetitions, including transference.
At the other extreme is the situation in which metaphoric play collapses into difference-seeking and discerning processes only. In this case, metaphoric processes are disabled to the same extent as the degree of the lack of similarity seeking. For example, if an analysand sees only difference between herself and the analyst or other objects, then points of reference with which to discuss this perception will be scarce to nonexistent. At the extreme end of difference discerning, with no similarities discerned overall, there are, in effect, no useful concepts to draw upon. A framework of human experience in which all concepts are singletons is not usable because of an absence of links among discrete sensations and perceptions. No patterns can be detected without categories into which things fall and in which they can be grouped together.
Affective experience under such circumstances of solely difference seeking would be unlinked as well. There would be no linking of similar affective experiences from which humans learn about the world and themselves in it. Moreover, it would not be possible to link the affective expression of others, as is so crucial for development and growth, especially in infancy. The metaphoric capacity is disabled altogether in this extreme case, and is relatively disabled in less extreme cases.
Without ongoing metaphoric processes, the beginning of life would be entirely different. One aspect of early development is that affectively linked concepts are acquired and increasingly applied. The discernment of patterns of needs, satisfactions, and frustrations; progressive recognition of others and self; increasing control over mobility—all these are in part the result of developing conceptual and perceptual apparatuses. Without this none of these developments can occur, seriously arresting maturation—for example, in the emergence of conceptualizations of space and oneself in it as three-dimensional. In extreme cases, even basic intentional mobility would not be achievable.
It is not going too far to say that human life would not be possible without some capacity to detect similarity amongst even vast differences. While the situation of living with a diminished capacity to form links is well known to psychoanalysis and is treatable with analytic processes, human life entirely without that capacity is neither survivable nor even conceivable. Virtually by definition, the state of that experience cannot be described in a language that necessarily employs linking concepts.
This exploration of the role of difference in metaphoric processes again demonstrates the fundamental nature of metaphor to human experience and to life itself. Without some presence of the play of similarity—that is, without some capacity for linking—there is no human life. Modell's (1990, 1997a) statement holds: that metaphoric processes are involuntary and inborn, that “metaphor is the currency of the mind” (2009a, p. 555). Furthermore, metaphoric processes are present from the beginning of life and are the means by which humans experience, learn about, and understand the world, including themselves and all objects. The largest element of human commonality may be metaphoric processes. What is pervasive to our processing and experience is affective and interpretive.
One way to articulate the concept of metaphoric process is to differentiate its components. The components are ingredients, or dimensions, of a given metaphoric process. As ingredients, each contributes to the totality of any given point or time slice of a metaphoric process. The discernment of components as various ingredients of metaphoric processes is for heuristic purposes; they may not be neatly isolable or readily observable in the flux of actual clinical experience. Four components in a given metaphoric segment are the idiosyncratic, local, community, and generalized community ingredients. Movement or influence within any one component may have ramifications and effects in each of the other components.
In normal development, the peak, active formation of idiosyncratic features of metaphoric processes will take place in the early, preverbal period. The segments of metaphoric processes that run through this preverbal period are unlikely to be retrievable with organizations or structures close to those originally involved in them. The acquisition of local and community configurations contributes to the transformation of prelinguistic, idiosyncratic elements. However, this does not mean that the latter disappear or that they have been rendered inactive.
At the other end of the spectrum from the idiosyncratic is the generalized community component. The contents of this related component are close to what have been called primary metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). This component arises in structures as that portion common to all humans, across individual experience and culture. It might be that this component of metaphoric processes, while universal for humans, is relative to specific eras of human existence.
The structures from the other two components, the local and the community, lie in between the idiosyncratic and the generalized community in their influence on strands of metaphoric processes. These are configurations that revolve around perceptions of early environmental experience and those of broader cultural experience throughout life, respectively. Using metaphor as a foundation, all levels that have input into human experience can be incorporated. The idiosyncratic, the self in early relation to primary objects, the larger environment and enculturated community, as well as the level of general human experience—all these contribute to metaphoric processes across the life span.
Life proceeds along a sinew of metaphoric processes. The sinew continues for the life of the person. If the sinews of different individuals were entirely different from each other, then the individuals could not meaningfully interact with each other. While one's own sinew is what makes one oneself through time and space, many of the elements of that sinew—that is, metaphoric processes, as well as items in those processes—can be overridingly similar, more similar than not, across individuals, and this is what makes intersubjective, and derivatively intrasubjective, human interaction possible. Trough early experience, the highly idiosyncratic conceptualizations embedded in the metaphoric processes give way and merge with elements of this sinew that are held in common with others. Language acquisition and exposure to wider social experience contribute to this giving-way and merging process. Even in the idiosyncratic, more private, early phase, the ingredients of metaphoric processes may be mostly shared as a result of the commonalities of in utero and early experience.
A person can be represented as a sinew—a bundle of metaphoric processes. All that is identified with a person—his or her life experiences, memories, thoughts, bodily experiences, etc.—are part of the sinew of metaphoric processes associated with that person. Not all strands persist throughout the entire length of the sinew (that is, the lifespan of the individual). Some become dormant, some merge with other strands, and some may even disintegrate. Some strands commence in the middle of the sinew, while some split into multiple strands. Some segments of strands overlap with others. Each strand carries valences throughout the metaphor and may become stronger or weaker at different points and in relation to valences on other strands.
A momentary cross section of an individual's sinew would display multiple metaphoric processes in that time slice. Each metaphoric process in the time segment is composed of combinations of the four categories of ingredients, together with the valences of each. In addition, each valenced time slice is impacted to some degree by any or all of the metaphoric processes in the sinew up until that point of the time slice. Valences that are the strongest at that moment give rise to a tendency to influence the individual toward movement along the components or strands to which those valences are attached.
This way of describing a self provides a structural portrayal of the complex aspect of human experience with which psychoanalysts work. Each metaphoric process in itself represents one pathway that organizes and motivates the future of the self with respect to a specific cluster of experience. In any given moment of a person's life, multiple clusters of experience, multiple metaphoric processes, all have bearing on the moment, each with its own internal set of affects. Some current elements of one metaphoric process may well stand in contradiction to, or in affect bundle opposite to, another current slice of a different metaphoric process. Thus, motivation, multiple function, overdetermination, and conflict can be understood within this framework.
In this framework, self-awareness, whether bodily or otherwise, is mediated by metaphoric processes. In principle, one has no more direct route to self-awareness than object awareness. Whether it is a self-awareness of something as basic as enjoying a certain taste, it involves multiple metaphoric processes in order to arrive at linking the discrimination of a certain taste and the experience of pleasure. This may occur without an understanding of the past experience that led to the pleasure. Awareness of objects is not different in kind, but at certain points in the lifespan, it may sometimes be more limited and at other times less limited than self-experience and awareness. It is the sinew of ongoing metaphoric processes that brings one to a moment of affective or other experience, rather than an immediate self-experience. This view of persons and personal experience is grounded in unconscious processes.
1 parts of this chapter originally appeared in Psychoanalytic Inquiry 31(2): pp. 134–146 as “Unconscious Metaphoric processes as a Basis for an inclusive Model of psychoanalytic perspectives.”