Minds, bodies and metaphors (original) (raw)

By affirming that mind and body exist in different domains of knowledge as discriminations acted by an observer, Constructivism has overcome the old dualism typical of psychosomatic medicine, that traditionally considers mind and body as two separated entities. However, both in everyday life and in clinical work, we often stumble upon our own language that, being intrinsically dualistic, does not seem to allow the epistemological "leap" and instead leads us back into the old dichotomy. This is an important issue particularly during a psychotherapy with a person who suffers from so called "psychosomatic symptoms". Indeed, according to Kelly, in this case the aim of the therapy is to help the patient to subsume their rigid mind-body dualism. But how can it be done, if language does not support us? Through a case study, this paper suggests that the use of metaphorical language allows us to "construct a bridge" between mind and body, in order to give the suffering a new meaning.

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