Reflections on Metaphor and Affects1

For centuries the investigation of metaphor belonged to poets and literary critics. However, in the last few years, metaphor, the engine that drives poetry and literature, has become a subject of investigation by natural science. Neuroscience is now exploring the problem of intentionality and meaning. There is an exciting convergence of interest in metaphor from a variety of disciplines that includes neurobiology, linguistics, and cognitive science. The concept of metaphor itself has undergone a revolutionary change in that the locus of metaphor is now recognized to be in the mind and not in language. The locus of metaphor is thought, not language (Lakoff, 1993). What is significant for psychoanalysis is the growing recognition among investigators that metaphors have their origin in the body (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, Lakoff, 1987; Turner, 1991). There is a privileged connection between affects and metaphor. As feelings are to some measure beyond our control, translating such feelings into metaphors provides us with some degree of organization and control. Through the use of metaphor we are able to organize otherwise inchoate experiences, so it is not surprising that somatic experiences, such as affects, are transformed into metaphors. Psychoanalysts have known this for a long time. For example, Sharpe observed in 1940 that metaphors evolve from the feelings and sensations that accompany the control of bodily orifices. This is an observation that all of us can confirm clinically. For example, a patient may experience making an effort at work as the metaphoric equivalent of making an effort in producing a stool.

It is difficult to imagine any process of mentation in which metaphor does not enter. Accordingly I have come to think of metaphor as the currency of mind. Metaphor is a fundamental and indispensable structure of human understanding, a