Transformative psychology #9: Choose your metaphors wisely

Scholars in both Communications and Conflict Transformation have researched the psychology of metaphor choice as we work on our identities, our problems, our relationships, our sense of morality, and much more, including, it is hoped, effective solutionary paths.

Interviewing Restorative Justice (RJ) practitioners and analyzing the results led Communications researchers Ian Borton and Gregory Paul (2015) to posit that the common metaphor of regarding the RJ, healing, might be far more problematic than a less fraught metaphor of gardening. 

Underneath this work is the vast cultural differences and injured parties' logical struggles with the idea of a perpetrator being part of healing the injuries. But tending to a garden is a more modest and less loaded metaphor, still with positive imagery and associations. 

When the Jesuit priest, literati, and nonviolent resister Dan Berrigan explained the process by which he developed and presented the metaphor for their bold act of direct action interference with the draft sending young Americans to kill or die in Vietnam, he told us, "It took me all winter, after our initial attempt in October 1967, to say 'Fire.' Then we made homemade napalm, which was killing and maiming so many civilians in Vietnam, and burned the draft files in the parking lot." That metaphor, reified in the blaze of draft files, caught metaphorical fire and it literally and figuratively sparked a series of what became known as draft board raids, more than three dozen of them, across the US, grinding at least some of the Selective Service system to a halt and lighting up the public consciousness.

The right metaphor, rooted in the right psychological approach, can alter reality. 

References

Borton, I. M., & Paul, G. D. (2015). Problematizing the healing metaphor of restorative justice. Contemporary Justice Review, 18(3), 257–273. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/10282580.2015.1057704