The production of metaphor in poetry therapy as a means of achieving insight

Journal/Book: Arts in Psychotherapy. 1983; 10: 167-173.

Abstract: Illustrates how careful attention to the symbolic language in the poetry of patients can facilitate and enhance the therapeutic process in poetry therapy. Two disciplines are encountered in poetry therapy--poetry and psychology--in which the reappraisal of experience is paramount. Poetry, with its richness of metaphor, is a vehicle for understanding another's model of the world and creating models containing alternate choices. It is asserted that the symbols that emerge in poetry are personal expressions that have meaning to the poet-patient in the exploration of innermost feelings and may produce a more conscious awareness of individual conflicts. Poet-patients communicate with and comfort themselves by using metaphoric language to express their inner landscapes, realms that are often difficult to express in conventional speech. Poetry produced in group poetry therapy sessions by patients in a short-term psychiatric hospital is presented to illustrate how poetry therapy facilitated the recovery process for these patients. It is concluded that the symbolic language that evolves in the reappraisal of experience in poetry is a vehicle of insight, an alternate way of approaching reality, and a measure for unearthing unacknowledged emotions. (18 ref)

Note: use of metaphors in group poetry therapy

Keyword(s): Group psychotherapy; poetry ; metaphor ; adulthood

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