Gibbs Raymond W
Independent scholar, Soquel, CA, USA.
Transcult Psychiatry. 2023 Oct;60(5):770-780. doi: 10.1177/1363461520965424. Epub 2020 Nov 18.
Metaphors are frequently seen in individuals' descriptions of their illness and healing experiences. These figurative phrases are not ornamental, or distracting, but often reveal the particularities of what it is like to be ill or healing. Culture plays a big role in shaping the particular metaphors employed to express one's thoughts about illness and different healing rituals. However, a significant reason why metaphor emerges in illness narratives is because people ordinarily reason via embodied simulation processes in which they imaginatively project themselves into different real-world and fantastic situations, such as imagining one's struggle with cancer as being a complex dance with the disease. These simulations can play a major role in therapeutic interventions to help those who are ill and in distress.
隐喻在个人对疾病及康复经历的描述中屡见不鲜。这些比喻性的表述并非装饰性的或分散注意力的，而是常常揭示出患病或康复的独特之处。文化在塑造用于表达个人对疾病及不同治疗仪式看法的特定隐喻方面起着重要作用。然而，隐喻在疾病叙述中出现的一个重要原因是，人们通常通过具身模拟过程进行推理，在这个过程中，他们会想象自己置身于不同的现实世界和奇幻情境中，比如将与癌症的抗争想象成与疾病的一场复杂舞蹈。这些模拟在治疗干预中可以发挥重要作用，以帮助那些患病且处于痛苦中的人。
