Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Somatic EMDR Trauma Therapy
Integrative Trauma Therapy on the Norfolk/Suffolk border
If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there… Lewis Carroll
Traditionally, metaphor has been thought of as a poetic way of speaking, a way to make language more colourful and interesting. Well of course it is that, but it’s also much more. Far from being just a fancy way of speaking, some researchers of the human mind go so far as to say that metaphor plays a major part in defining our very sense of reality.
Continue reading “What’s your Metaphor?”
The following is an extract from a book I am writing about the journey of the Fool through the Major Arcana in the Tarot.
The chapter it comes from is called ‘of Stories and Symbols’ …………
It’s quite a natu
ral thing to be fearful of death. It’s nature’s way of keeping us alive of course and having a strong survival instinct means our genes get passed down and evolution can carry on doing what it does best.
After all, the survival of the fittest process would soon go to pot if we didn’t have a basic primal urge to stay alive.
But what about when the fear of death becomes pervasive and stops us enjoying our life?
I’ve heard it said (and I can’t remember where or by whom) that we can never be truly alive until we come to terms with the inevitable reality of our own death.
So is it ever a good thing to put the thought of death to the back of your mind and concentrate on the day to day matter of life instead?
Metaphor isn’t just a poetic way to make language more interesting. It’s also a vital mechanism for abstract thought and an efficient method for communicating abstract concepts.
It’s also claimed that it plays a major part in the way we understand ourselves and the world we live in.
But why do we think metaphorically? What’s the point of abstract thought?
What happened to create this symbolic way of thinking, and what purpose does it serve in evolutionary terms?
We’re not the only creatures who think, reason and understand. In many ways we use our brains in the same way as other species do. We still have the reptilian and earlier mammalian parts of our brain that function on an unconscious level and govern a large part of our existence and survival.
But at some point the human brain evolved further; it began to think of one thing in terms of another i.e. symbolically – and so developed the ability to think in terms of the abstract. Continue reading “Is metaphor who we are?”