How Metaphor Can Free Us From Therapy-Speak
reflections from existing online as a writer and psychiatrist
Metaphors are a beautiful part of my writing life, but they are equally important in my work as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Metaphors open the gates for us to be able to express what is very difficult to speak to in literal terms. Like poetry, metaphor helps us place words around the edges of something is mysterious without being forced into collapsing or reducing it. When we speak in metaphor, the rules of the game are that we know we are not capturing all of it.
For Mary Oliver May, I’m drawing this week from Upstream, which is a collection of essays by Mary Oliver on life, writing, and other thinkers. In her essay on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s work, she writes this: