PROLOGUE

In our prior issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry (Barnett and Katz, 2005), metaphoric processes emerged as a salient clinical factor when exploring ineffable aspects of transference. The contributors to that issue, representing diverse analytic perspectives, indicated collectively that metaphor, in fact, suffuses all facets of analytic investigation, and provides a possible theoretical base for interacting features of treatment (the intrapsychic and the intersubjective), as well as change. The potential synthesis of analytic perspectives around the ingredient of metaphor suggested that close attention to its workings in treatment could clarify and advance theories of psychoanalytic practice, expanding the common ground among them. This sequel is intended to pursue that conception.

The hypothesis of a metaphoric process as a part of the unconscious mind was introduced into psychoanalysis by Arnold Modell (1990) in his depiction of the analytic method for addressing emotional memories that unconsciously guide action. Modell has extended this hypothesis in more recent work (e.g., Modell, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007), elucidating the key idea that emotional experience is unconsciously and involuntarily processed metaphorically. Dr. Modell has presented an elegant overview and expansion of his psychoanalytic contributions to the subject of metaphor in the introductory paper of this issue.

In his lucid article, “Metaphor—The Bridge Between Feelings and Knowledge,” Modell describes metaphor as an unconscious psychological process, as well as an expression of an as yet to be specified neurophysiological process that transfers meaning between dissimilar domains, and, through the use of novel recombinations, transforms meaning. As part of the unconscious mind, the metaphoric process is assumed to be a fundamental mode of cognition (with its own developmental line) central to the human imagination. Originating in bodily sensations and feelings and appropriated by langu