ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of somatic metaphor is the most striking example of the many ways in which meanings and other emotional and subjective elements may be demonstrated in physical disease processes. To begin the chapter offers two examples, the first of which is a very obvious somatic metaphor. The second, while reasonably obvious, does require the observer to work a little harder to access the relationships between the patient's meanings and disease manifestation. A term like somatic metaphor may be seen as fatally flawed in that it retains an element of mind/body separateness. And somatic metaphors, if we can legitimately use that term, are the most vivid representation of the conjunction between symbolic meaning and bodily disease. Language, concepts and meanings are therefore seen, by these modern linguists and embodiment philosophers, as at least partly structured in the format of the body.
