ABSTRACT
Metaphor has a long tradition of use in talking interventions and especially so within acceptance & commitment therapy. Metaphors offer an opportunity to harness the strength of language in order to understand and formulate stuckness, and also to facilitate behavioural change. The metaphor therefore becomes the vehicle upon which new information or functions are delivered. The client’s relational network becomes the target, which receives the new information. N. Torneke offers a comprehensive insight into the use of metaphor in practice from the perspective of relational frame theory, which is a particularly useful lens through which to observe and understand how to employ metaphors. The beauty of the metaphor is that practitioners can give the client an actual finger trap, so they can feel the direct experience of this without having to rely on a description. In developing metaphors with clients, whether an ‘off the shelf’ one or co-creating a new one, there are several key issues to keep in mind.
