ABSTRACT
People become counsellors not only through the development of skills of interpersonal engagement and attunement to others, but through the composition of a counsellor identity. Counsellor educators seek to facilitate such shifts in identity. In this chapter, I describe how identity shifts can occur via metaphor play for students in conversation with peers. In particular, I show how through a specific kind of conversation – an outsider witnessing conversation (White, 2007) – a student counsellor came to compose her narrative identity as a counsellor more richly. I thus argue that metaphor play can enhance the identity narratives of student counsellors and may be of use in counsellor education and other contexts of professional identity development.
