ABSTRACT
This chapter looks first at what is ordinary and play-like about the gestural bridge and second at what is evocative and powerful in its distinctive logical configuration. The nursing interventions with Sara and Joe both appeared, initially, as ordinary play. Metaphoric reasoning is under-reported and under-theorized as a basis for therapeutic communication in nursing. To understand its clinical applications, however, is to expand our understanding of the contents of nursing's therapeutic toolkit. Explicit use of play activities in therapy dates back to the early period of psychoanalysis, when Melanie Klein and Anna Freud first began using toys in the treatment of child patients. Metaphoric reasoning has figured centrally in the history of psychoanalytic approaches to treatment. Dance and "movement" therapists in particular have been at the forefront of research into the ways body-based activity enables metaphoric exploration of trauma and other mental health concerns.
