“Inside or Outside”

Laura A Cariola

doi:10.7565/landp.v9i2.5265

Abstract

By relating the exterior-interior model of body boundary awareness to Lakoff & Johnson’s (1999) in-out orientation of container-schematic conceptualisations, this study aims to explore the use of container-schematic imagery in the autobiographical memories of High and Low Barrier Personalities. The results of this study are based on a corpus of everyday autobiographical memories (N =488) and dream memories (N=450). The results demonstrated that, in both memory types, High Barrier personalities used more semantic fields representing concrete and metaphorical container-schematic imagery (Johnson, 1987), suggesting that container metaphors are similar to the Barrier personality construct. The results are discussed also in reference to the social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Highlights

Taking into consideration Fisher and Cleveland’s exterior-interior model of body boundary awareness and Lakoff & Johnson’s (1999) in-out orientation of container-schematic conceptualisations, it can be stated that if an increased use of the semantic fields that represent concrete and metaphorical container-schematic imagery were to be found in the narratives of High Barrier personalities compared to Low Barrier personalities, this result would support the proposition that the referential system which coordinates sense impressions and organises our mental representations differs between the barrier personality types
As heightened levels of primordial mental activity have been associated with an increase in use of metaphorical language (Freud, 1900), this study aims to explore how High and Low Barrier personalities use metaphorical expressions differently in narratives of everyday memories and of dream memories
Consistent with the first hypothesis (H1), High Barrier personalities had a high keyness of semantic fields that were perceptually grounded to the container schema with enclosed or partially enclosed objects and a material boundary that separated the interior from the exterior (Johnson, 1987)

Summary

Introduction

“McDonald’s slammed for separating Golden Arches to promote social distancing” (New York Post, 2020). This observation was evidenced by their unusual number of unique Rorschach responses emphasising the containing, protective and surface-related features of the presented inkblot pictures — for example “cave with rocky walls”, “flower pot”, or “turtle with a shell” CMT’s assumption that metaphors are grounded in bodily experiences echoes the Freudian psychoanalytic notion, which positions the body as a central concept for describing and explaining the functional and dysfunctional development of the self in human beings (Freud, 1905; 1923) From this context, Holland proposes that CMT aligns with the psychoanalytic idea that unconscious and conscious thinking are interwoven processes and diffuse the idea of an “objective reality” and “literal truth”. Despite the fact that CMT does not differentiate between two levels of consciousness (i.e., the conscious and unconscious), Fónagy (2001, p. 357) points out that Johnson (1987) compared the system of metaphorical thought to a net of channels, which implies the existence of different levels of consciousness that canalise the mapping processes of metaphorical image schemas

Aims of this Study

Participants and Data

Procedure

Results

Discussion