Therapeutic Metaphors for Children
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General) North American (US General American - GenAM)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
therapeutic metaphors for Children and the child within Chapter three Ingredients of Story writing. As the sun streamed its shimmering raise across the ocean, we noticed a large gray and white pelican out at sea. As we watched her graceful body lift off the water while scanning for food, we wondered how she knows where to search. We're not able to see where her source of nourishment lies out there. You know what is beyond. Our realm of awareness is well within the sphere of awareness of a simple creatures such as the Pelican. In subsequent chapters, we will present a detailed framework for generating effective therapeutic metaphors from a clinical perspective, how to observe, evoke and utilize a vast array of emotional and behavioral information that is incorporated into a story. In this chapter, we will focus on the therapeutic metaphor is a story writing experience having much in common with the rich legacy of fairy tales we all remember from our childhoods. Literary versus therapeutic metaphors. Fairy tales are an excellent example of how metaphor can be used as both a literary and therapeutic device. Stories are told in a colorful, image filled language and contain an important psychological message. Not all metaphor is therapeutic, however, so it is necessary to understand the subtle elements that separate a purely literary one from a therapeutic one. The one element both types of metaphor have in common is correspondence. We must be able to experience an immediate synchrony between the metaphor and whatever it is describing its reference. Correspondents can take place on many levels within the reader, however, and it is here that the pathways of literary and therapeutic metaphors diverge in a literary metaphor. The correspondence between the metaphor and its referent must be close enough to evoke a sense of imagistic familiarity. The reader must be drawn into the richness of the imagery, however remote or foreign, the experience being depicted. For example, in the following passage by D. H. Lawrence was which concludes his book Sons and Lovers, We see Lawrence's expert use of metaphor to conduct the desolation of young Paul upon the death of his mother from Page 4 20 On every side, the immense dark silence seemed to be pressing him so tiny a spark into extinction and yet almost nothing he could not be extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out beyond the stars and son stars and son. A few bright grains went spinning round for terror and holding each other and embrace there in the darkness that out past the mall and left in tiny and daunted so much and himself infanticidal at the core nothingness and yet not nothing. In this passage, Lawrence uses metaphorical images for the purpose of describing an experience. The experience is set in a different time period and in a different country, which makes it experientially unfamiliar to most American readers. Furthermore, the actual details of the experience the death of Paul's mother following a long and painful illness may seem familiar to only a small number of readers. And certainly not everyone has experienced the vacuous desolation Paulus feeling if the scene Lawrence describes it so beautifully drawn by the metaphors he creates that the reader enters into it through the richness of the images alone, where description is the main function of a literary metaphor. Altering, reinterpreting and reframing are the main goals of the therapeutic metaphor. In order to achieve these, the therapeutic metaphor must evoke both the imagistic familiarity of the literary metaphor and a relational familiarity based on a sense of personal experience. The story itself, the characters, events and settings must speak to the common life experience of those listening, and it must do so in language that is familiar. An example from a modern fairy tale might be The Wizard of Oz, which functions as a metaphor for the common theme of searching for magical solutions. Somewhere outside oneself, the images of a wicked witch, a good witch, a tin man, scarecrow, lion and wizard all depict aspects of the listeners experience as mirrored in Dorothy. Even as adults viewing the original film version for the 10th time, we find ourselves still drawn into Dorothy's journey. Captivated, we watches. Dorothy's initial yearning for Somewhere Over the Rainbow is transformed through a myriad of fantastic experiences into her departing, heartfelt declaration. There's no place like home. Each major character in The Wizard of Oz carries an imagistic and therapeutic message. The grand mighty wizard, apparent bearer of Magical Solutions, turns out to be just a common man who guides the characters to solutions. They hold within themselves therapeutic metaphor for re owning projected strengths and abilities. The Wicked Witch of the East, from whom Dorothy and her companions flee in terror and subservience turns out to be completely water soluble, a metaphor for the ultimate impotence of negative viewpoints and actions. The problems each character brings so earnestly before the Wizard for resolution turned out to be mere oversight. The lion always had courage. The scarecrow always had a brain, the Tin Man always had a heart, and Dorothy always had the ability to get back home. These are all metaphors for the basic therapeutic principle that answers solutions, abilities and resource is lie within each individual. The fact that The Wizard of Oz story has appealed for all ages points to the degree of relational familiarity it contains. The images in this story are encompassing enough to generalize too many different ages and life experiences, and yet their personal enough to evoke immediate private responses. Lawrence's night metaphor does not have such a ride ranging ability, even though it clearly succeeds on a literary level. Ultimately, it is not enough in the therapy session, group session or classroom to construct a metaphor that is in majestically rich, as in Lawrence's passage. If it fails to touch the listener in a personally relevant way, ingredients of therapeutic metaphors, the question could be asked, What does an effective metaphor do that makes it therapeutic? Possibly its most important function is to create what Rossi termed a shared, phenomenal, phenomenal, logical reality in which the world created by the therapist metaphor is experienced by the child. This creates a three way empathetic relationship between child therapist and story, which then makes it possible for the child to develop a sense of identification with the characters and events portrayed. It is this sense of identification that contains the transformational power of the metaphor. The child must create a bridge of personal connection between himself and the events of the story if he is to bring parts of the story back into his real life in the effective therapeutic metaphor, this is facilitated by representing the child's problem accurately enough so that he no longer feels alone, yet indirectly enough so that you does not feel embarrassed, ashamed or resistant. Once identification is established between the child and the story, the child's sense of isolation, about his own problem, nobody has. My problem is replaced with a sense of shared experience. They had a problem like mine again, however, the connection between the metaphorical problem and the child's problem remains not quite conscious. Indeed, this is the fine delicacy of a therapeutic metaphor. The story hits home, but in a curiously removed way. It focuses on the problem but in a quietly diffused way and activate specific abilities. And resource is but in a non threatening, generalized way. The fatherless child crying through the farewell scene of E. T. May never consciously think this is just like when Daddy went away. Yet on some level, the sense of love and ultimate well being suggested by the movies ending may help the child experiences loss in a new and more healing way and without his ever being aware of it. How does one go about creating the shared phenomena, logical reality by which the therapeutic metaphor achieves its effect? If we look at the classic fairytales, we can discern elements or ingredients of story writing that are common to many of them in one way or another. Most classical fairy tales one establishing overall theme of metaphorical conflict in relation to the protagonist to personify unconscious processes in the form of heroes or helpers representing the protagonists, abilities and resource is and villains or obstructions, representing the protagonist fears and negative beliefs. Three. Personify parallel learning situations in which the protagonist was successful. Four. Present a metaphorical crisis within a context of inevitable resolution by which the protagonist overcomes a resolves his problem. Five. Develop a new sense of identification for the protagonist as a result of his victorious hero's journey and six cult to mate Culminate with celebration in which the protagonist special Worth has acknowledged.