ABSTRACT
This chapter places the work of Lakoff and Johnson within a psychoanalytic account of language and makes use of their notion of the cognitive unconscious. It views metaphor as condensation and metonymy as displacement and shows how they function as ubiquitous cognitive and linguistic modes of apprehension. It includes research on embodied cognition to show how thought and language become manifested in metaphors that extend from the body, and how these aid in the consolidation of identity. The role of metaphor is also discussed as a performance of psychoanalytic defense mechanisms that enable a sublimation of instinctual urges. This corresponds to the psychoanalytic theory that human culture is based on the suppression of instincts.
