7 - ‘Things Come Out of My Mouth That Shouldn’t Be There.’

Summary

Chapter 7 looks at the distinctive ways in which people whose states of minds have been altered by traumatic events and psychological disorders make use of embodied metaphor. It looks at how stress, anxiety and depression affect the ways in which people experience and interact with embodied metaphor, and introduces work that has explored how people’s experience of embodied metaphor is shaped by the experience of pregnancy loss. It also focuses on psychological conditions, including autistic spectrum disorders, Asperger syndrome and schizophrenia, and explores the ways in which individuals with schizophrenia employ embodied metaphor. It draw parallels between these different states of mind and conditions and identifies common traits in terms of how they impact on the types of metaphors that people employ and the ways in which they employ them.