ABSTRACT
As early as 1895, in the Studies on Hysteria, Josef Breuer expressed a prescient concern regarding a tendency towards the literalisation of metaphor in psychoanalytic theory. The experience of analysands and analysts alike is unconsciously shaped by metaphors and contrasts that, having become literalised, have assumed the status of myths. The distinction between live and dead metaphor finds parallels in a range of psychoanalytic traditions. W. R. Bion’s distinction between alpha and beta elements overlaps to some extent Hanna Segal’s distinction between symbolic representation and symbolic equation. The one-sided conception of psychopathology as “forbidden mixture” developed by J. Chasseguet-Smirgel in “Perversion and the Universal Law” needs to be complemented by recognition of the pathologies of “forbidden separation”. Demythologising of “dead” metaphor and contrast has long been practised in theology. Jesus, Terry Eagleton writes, “seems to have regarded his own life, death and resurrection as the fulfilment or consummation of Mosaic law.
