Rhetorical Mysteries of Metaphor

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As Paul Ricoeur has been at pains to point out in his important survey of the intricate

rhetorical mysteries of metaphor,1 the significance of this figure of speech lies in its

power to affect a displacement and extension of meaning by attending to a principle of

similarity which might be construed between two otherwise previously unrelated

entities. Having said this, however, it might as equally be averred that this potential, like

all other workings of power, can also be abused, misplaced, and employed for purposes

of either conscious or unintentional obfuscation. At the risk of calling down upon myself

the opprobrium of current orthodoxy I wish to essay the possibility that something like

this kind of undetected bewilderment is one of the attendant features at work whenever

we seek to speak about ‘mental illness’. I wish to argue that, without a proper

appreciation that this now seemingly universal appellation is a ‘mere’ metaphor (one

which can as equally illuminate as darken our understanding depending on how it isapplied to the still arguably variable phenomena of distressful human experience), the

possibility of a more humanely nuanced appreciation and treatment of ‘mental illness’

will continue to elude us.2

Mental Illness as Metaphor.

Cf: Thomas Szasz. Also Susan Sontag (?) “Illness as Metaphor”.

A metaphor is at its most living, active, transformative best when it is conscious

and employs its full poetic force with a mixture of alacrity, intentional precision, and a

degree of ironic, self-effacing good humour - that is to say, when it fully and consistently

resists all temptation toward that theoretical nominalism by which, according to James

Hillman, “words have become both bloated in importance and dried in content.”3 The

proliferation of this latter phenomenon constitutes a corporate act of monumentally

wilful ignorance which proceeds as if the metaphor actually describes a concretely inert

empirical actuality rather than a dynamically phenomenological approximation of its

own truthfulness.4

1 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language. Tr. Robert Czerny. (London:

Routledge, 2003).2 There are a great many histories of mental illness and a variety of works documenting see Foucault’sMental Illness and Psychology. Etc etc The Birth of the Clinic and It is the contention of this paper that such

internecine conflicts and warring ideological battles are significant in and of themselves and point to the

possibility that a larger, more nuanced general field theory is required which is able to harness the power of

multivalent and dialectical models of theorizing the phenomena under consideration.

3 James Hillman, Revisioning Psychology. Perennial Library. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 8.4 It may be useful in this context to be reminded of Heidegger’s struggle to articulate the nature of truth as

rather than as the mistakenly inert correspondence of previous epistemological theorizing. If



This temptation to nominalism is at the core, perhaps, of what Owen Barfield

describes as a pervasive ‘idolatry’; the wilful fixity of poetically fluid truth-telling, the

moribund calcification of living linguistic tissue. What is a mere ‘appearance’ is ascribed

exclusive actuality.

At may be useful to be as completely transparent at this point as is possible. I

wish also to essay the possible dividends for genuine understanding that might arise if

we were to apply insights derived from Barfield to a consideration of the meaning and

make-up of ‘mental illness’. What might be the possible benefits and opening of

perspective which might arise from this?

In the first place. The living poetic reality (as opposed to mere actuality)of the

metaphor would presumably be preserved. It could become again a powerful way of appreciating the phenomenology and suggestiveness of the wide range of phenomena

we associate with ‘mental illness’. Metaphor is at its root a powerful descriptor of

experience thereby assisting existential engagement with whatever condition is thus

signified.

By the same token it therefore also relativises the power of this label. It is merely

a metaphor – a powerful description of the inalienably liminal experience of the self and

Being that can as equally become (through howbeit pain-filled passages of obscure

knowing and individual struggle) a redescribed and powerfully poetic alternative form

of soul-making.5

The freedom in view here is of course Sartrean in nature. It may not be

the audacious falsity of believing ‘it is possible to become whatever you want to

become’, of radically (almost magically) altering one’s outward circumstances and inner

disposition, but of choosing, through often excruciating awareness of one’s

responsibility, how we might actively and poetically choose to position ourselves in

response to those realities. As distinct from the contemporary prejudices by which it

was all too readily surrounded, some historical perspective now permits us, perhaps, to

nothing else Heidegger’s reaching back past our own stale linguistic assumptions toward the strangeness,

the unheimlichkeit of the Greeks reminds us that something as ‘basic’, as fundamental as ‘truth’ cannot be

divorced from our native impulse to cast about metaphorically, capturing in this case, an understanding of

truth rooted in the extended metaphor of myth.5 There is of course nothing revolutionary or novel in this suggestion that is little more than a recapitulation

of the broad scope of traditional depth psychology perspectives. In this sense the proliferation, for example,

of post Jungian schools of thought and therapeutic approaches is not actually evidence of a divergence from

Jungian orthodoxy. Indeed, despite superficial doctrinal differences and divergences, it might be that the

core Jungian insight remains in the conviction maintains itself in various guises in what Hillman describesas the ‘poetic basis of mind’. See James Hillman, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account. (Dallas: Spring

Publications, 1993), p. 6f.



see that within Existentialism, was a desire to articulate in the midst of the post-war

weariness of the world, a viewpoint that was actually redolent of the cool passion which

seeks to resist the shibboleths of ‘the present age’.

In this regard, the connection between Sartre and the angular dissidence of

‘Magister Kierkegaard’ is of course well known. Similarly, the sentiments of Thoreau

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by

mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn,

which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no

more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to

elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be

able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to

make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve

and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we

look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day,

that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life,

even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most

elevated and critical hour.6

There is, then, a certain dialectic when it comes to conceptualising and responding to

mental illness – especially from a Christian perspective. On the one hand a nuanced

willingness to assert that much of what is now called mental illness can be a form of

weakness – an inability or even a deeply nurtured unwillingness to face the horrendous

horror of our condition.

To grow up, to be educated, to master, to accomplish, psycho spiritual growth

and wisdom is to suffer an ego death born of the progressive existentially realised

eschatology of our own actual death.

Some are willing, some are not. In order to encourage growth as the norm someassertion of the strength/weakness dichotomy is useful or necessary here.

Alarmingly, perhaps, it is Nietzsche who is instructive here. He struggled

after health, strength, wellness, vitality. He was a courageous advocate of an enlarged

vision of our possible humanity. See Robert Solomon.7

6 Henry David Thoreau, Walden. (Cologne: Könemann, 1996), p.827 Robert Solomon, Living with Nietzsche: What the Great ‘Immoralist’ Has to Teach Us. (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2003).



However, (and herein lies once again the dialectic necessary to navigate these

waters) Nietzsche is also perhaps something of a warning. See Carl Jung’s comments on

Nietzsche in MDD and in his 2 volume work on Zarathustra.

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Rhetorical Mysteries of Metaphor