La catégorisation des métaphores conceptuelles du corps

Abstract

In the field of clinical psychology and psychotherapeutic techniques, patient and therapist utterances frequently include linguistic metaphors of the body. A metaphor is not only a stylistic device but also a tool for conceptualizing one's experience. In Freud's view, for example, the notion of the body as a “container” or “source” is one of the basic concepts of his psychodynamic theory: “According to a childhood belief, babies come from men urinating into a woman's body” or “It is undeniable that the libido has somatic sources”. More specifically, the following can be observed in psychotherapy: a) Variable-induction relaxation is based on therapeutic suggestions concerning sensations and images. Patients are often surprised by these words and images because they had not succeeded in giving voice to their suffering and, as a result, were confronted with an excess of sensations and feelings: “I feel sick at heart and full of bitterness”, “I feel like my head's in a vise”, “my body had disappeared”; b) La Décentration is based on figurative utterances about the body. During initial instructions the therapist will say, “Imagine that, starting at your toes, imagine that you are a small bubble and that you're going to slowly move up inside your body; when you arrive at the tips of your fingers, stay there, waiting; you're going to feel little hearts that beat at the tips of your fingers; you're waiting, open to everything happening in your body”; c) Ericksonian hypnosis, developed by Milton Erickson, is characterized in part by the use of indirect suggestions based on linguistic metaphors of the body: “You can wake up as a person… but you don't have to wake up as a body”; “You can wake up when your body wakes up, but you won't recognize your body”. Also: “Now, of course, the first step toward dissolving your legs… and… dissolving your hands”. The importance of linguistic metaphors of the body in clinical psychopathology led us to view such metaphors as “indicators of conceptual metaphors of the body”. That is why the fields of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy were a necessary point of departure for our research. In addition, we wanted to extend our investigation to poetic literature because of its large number of highly creative figurative expressions. Firstly, the objective of our study was to identify different types of body conceptualizations expressed in psychoanalytic and psychiatric practise and in poetic works selected for their focus on this theme. Secondly, our objective was to organize these conceptualizations into categories of conceptual metaphors based on a model inspired by the research of Lakoff and Johnson. The analysis of psychiatric and psychoanalytic manuals and works of poetic literature showed differences in the use of conceptual metaphors in these respective discourses. In psychiatric manuals, the conceptualization of the body centers on the idea of the BODY AS CONTAINER, with no stereotyped mental images or specific mental images about body organs. In psychoanalysis, linguistic metaphors of the body focus on the following terms: “genital organs”, “mouth”, “uterus”, “penis”, “phallus”, “anus”, “vagina”, and “body orifice”. Linguistic metaphors of the body in the selected works of poetic literature tended to conceptualize the body as an integrated system of experiences. These metaphors focussed on various organs and bodily substances, such as “heart”, “blood”, “chest”, “arm(s)”, “eye(s)”, “breast(s)”, “face”, “head”, “flesh”, “skin”, “hand(s)” and “tongue”. Poetry offers us the opportunity to create, deepen and reconstruct emotional experiences through the richness of metaphorical thought. With the growth of the neurosciences, poetic thought could serve as an important resource for the conceptualization of the body. Concerning methodology: • we searched for 178 words and their occurrence in manuals and poetic works regarding the concept of corporality and the symbolic parts of the body; • the research corpus for poetry included nine poets (each poet representing a century); overall, we searched for nine works of Italian poetry (579, 469 words) from the 12th to the 20th century using LIZ 3.0 software with textual analysis capabilities; • the research corpus for psychoanalysis included sections entitled “anorexia nervosa”, or “eating disorders” in the most recent manual of Italian psychoanalysis schools (8, 640 words); a traditional French psychoanalytic glossary (195, 320 words); and a single French thematic index (760, 480 words) of Freud's Works; • the research corpus for psychiatry included a well-known Italian manual of psychiatry and psychotherapy; sections entitled “anorexia nervosa” or “eating disorders” in five psychiatric manuals (60, 779 words); and the entire corpus (563, 953 words) of DSM-IV. Our categorization provided an alternative to the anatomical description of the body; we called this alternative a perceptive-literary construction of the body. It is characterized by a bodily narrative based on figurative utterances concerning anatomical and physiological features and conceptual metaphors of reference.