Literature and Psychoanalytic Process: A Look Through The Lens of Metaphor

Abstract

In this paper, the author highlights some aspects of the psychoanalytic process through the perspective of poetic metaphors. In reading new metaphors, we often become bewildered. A literal reading, and a first hand meaning, comes to nothing. A concrete reference, as well as truth, is likewise destroyed. On the ruins of these literary dimensions, however, a second hand reading, meaning, world, and truth may be formed. To take a step from literal understanding to a metaphoric one is demanding, as the former provides safety. The same is true of the position of the psychoanalytic patient. He or she needs to leave an idiosyncratic, well known, way of apprehending world and others, to take perspectives never tried before. The challenges and vulnerabilities the patient meets when facing the possibilities of starting a psychoanalytic process are compared to the position of the reader of poetic metaphors. The argument is illustrated with a psychoanalytical case.