The use of metaphors in cognitive therapy

Recently, cognitive approaches to therapy have been facing an increasingly constructivist orientation, in which persons are viewed as actively constructing their own reality from their deep/tacit/unconscious knowledge representation. This paper begins with the presentation of the main assumptions of the constructive movement in cognitive therapy on the nature and change of cognitive representations. It is asserted that at the deep/tacit/unconscious levels, knowledge is represented in analogical and metaphorical ways. The use of metaphors is suggested as a therapeutic tool to access and change tacit/unconscious levels of cognitive representation. A cognitive adaptation of the multiple-embedded-metaphor strategy is presented and illustrated.
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