THE ROLE OF METAPHOR IN ART THERAPY

Abstract

The article deals with the versatile vision of metaphor and its role in art therapy. The importance and expediency of using the metaphor in psychotherapy with regard to the specifics of the work of the art therapist is determined. The benefits of art therapy in working with people in difficult life situations are listed. Among the signs of art therapy indicated – resourcefulness and metaphoricalness. Resource as a goal and motivation for art-therapeutic intervention, and metaphorical – as a reflection of the inner world of the client in the form of tangible life stories. Classifying metaphors, emphasis on therapeutic and bodily.
Among the functions of the therapeutic metaphor were identified specific functions: expressive; dissociative; expansion of perception; expression indescribable; socializing; transforming Non-specific functions of the metaphor: regressive, manipulative, developing, explanatory, diagnostic, design.
The features of physical metaphors are revealed. In particular, the carnal metaphor is the establishment of a new semantic correspondence on certain features between two different contents, one of which is represented in bodily expression. The emphasis is placed on the fact that the basis of the nature of the physical metaphor is, on the one hand, the understanding of the phenomena of the spiritual sphere of human life through the phenomena of its bodily life, and on the other – the parallels between its bodily functioning and the events of spiritual life. Ways of the existence of the physical metaphor: in the form of the material substrate of each phenomenon of the mental life of man (i.e., the metaphor is expressive, in the form of attempts of corporal embodiment of those or other aspects of internal life (impression).
A description of the functions performed by the metaphor in the psychotherapeutic process is presented.