Gordon David - Stories That Change People

[Nguyen Trung Hoa]

Gordon David - Stories That Change People

In-Depth Seminar on metaphors for Storytelling

*Creating metaphors
*Delivering metaphors
*Influencing with metaphors...and more

What is Metaphor For?

Most psychological and linguistic schools of thought consider metaphors to be merely 'turns of phrase'. A growing number of scholars, however, have come to the conclusion that metaphor may be the underlying process by which we make sense of the world! David Leary for instance goes as far as to say:

"All knowledge is ultimately rooted in metaphorical (or analogical) modes of perception and thought."

While Lakoff and Johnson's ear-opening book 'Metaphors We Live By' clearly demonstrates how metaphors are essential for understanding:

"Metaphors are not mere poetical or rhetorical embellishments ... [they] affect the ways in which we perceive, think and act. Reality itself is defined by metaphor."

As usual, Gregory Bateson was on to this when he said to Fritzjof Capra:

"Metaphor, that's how the whole fabric of mental interconnections holds together. Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive."

The word metaphor has the same root as 'amphora' an ancient Greek vessel for carrying and storing precious liquids. Thus David Grove says the purpose of metaphor is to carry information. This information is hidden within the metaphor in symbolic form.

In the Metaphor Model, symbols are discrete elements embedded in the metaphor. They have significance for the client because they embody out-of-awareness information. David calls the entire mindbody-space which contains the symbols, the client's Metaphoric Landscape.
Metaphors are Everywhere

Metaphors express abstract ideas, concepts and processes in terms of more physical and concrete aspects of our experience. However, metaphors are much more common than is normally realised. We can all recognise overt metaphors such as 'It's like a knot in my stomach', 'I'm wandering around in a fog' or ' I have a broken heart'.

Implied metaphors, though, are a little more subtle. It is not obvious at first that 'chunking up and down', 'logical levels' and 'go into trance' for instance, make use of the metaphors of space, structure and container respectively. To give you an idea just how pervasive metaphors are, there is a different spatial metaphor in each of the following phrases, can you identify them?

That was too close for comfort
Let's put our minds together
This has gone too far
Reach out and I'll be there
You're running away from the truth
Let's go forward on this one
We're heading in different directions
I need my space
I need some distance on the problem
You're pushing me away
Look me up when you're in town
I'm down in the dumps
Let's get back to basics
I'm head over heels in love
She gets under my skin
Let's not get in too deep
He's rather shallow
Don't get on my nerves
How do I get out of this mess?

These examples, and there are thousands more, are metaphorical because they use the concept of space to describe an experience which is not spatial in nature. Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life and not just in language. Lakoff and Johnson sum it up:

"Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature."

While these authors acknowledge that we give meaning to our experience by 'metaphorising' -- the process of producing metaphors -- David Grove is the only person we know to have taken the next logical step.
Symbolic VAK

Through his use of Clean Language, David Grove discovered there are VAKOG representations of metaphoric and symbolic experience. They have a form and a consistent structure which when transformed alter a person's map of the world. This in turn results in new perceptions and behaviour.

Does this sound familiar? It should do because in this respect, metaphoric representations are like sensory and conceptual perceptions. However, there are a number of significant differences as discussed below.

David assumes that behind the metaphorical description lies a constructed symbolic representation. These have locations, consistent inherent structure and processes, and have special significance for the client who constructs them.

So when someone says: "It's like a knot in my stomach" David Grove assumes these words describe an internal experience that is 'real' for the client. Their perception has knot-like qualities, ie the content of symbolic representations is a way of coding information, just as submodalities code information.

If you Meta Model the client's language, you will encourage them to focus on their sensory experience. But in doing so they are likely to lose touch with the qualities of their experience that were knot-like. With Clean Language you preserve the metaphoric qualities of the client's experience. This not only paces them, it also offers them the opportunity to discover vital information 'hidden' in their symptoms -- Information that can lead to the transformation of their 'problem'.

Code:

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