ABSTRACT
One of the primary goals of an adventure therapist is to foster the development of lasting functional change for clients through adventure experiences. Metaphors are frequently used by adventure therapists to reach this common objective. Metaphors are generally defined as a form of communication where an idea or object that ordinarily has a specific and literal meaning on one level also possesses the likeliness and figurative meaning on another level. Metaphors obtain their richness, as well as their complexity or confusion, in the process of human communication.
Several of the reasons for using metaphors with clients in adventure therapy include:
Metaphors can make the treatment experience more inductive and relevant for clients. When an appropriate metaphoric framework is properly utilized it connects the adventure experience to the clients’ lives in a way where the successful resolution of the adventure experience provides a pathway, structure, or guidance in reaching their intended therapeutic objective.
Kinesthetic elements of therapy (i.e., “messages in the movement”) are used in conjunction with cognitive behavioral principles to increase the likelihood of achieving therapeutic objectives.
(3) Metaphors utilize conscious learning patterns that help to promote access to the unconscious mind. They recognize relevant structure/patterns, often through transderivational search patterns. Several researchers (e.g., Doherty, 1995; Gass & Priest, 2006) have found that properly structured metaphors with adventure experiences not only can produce greater client gains, but also maintain growth for longer periods of time.
Metaphors stimulate associational memory (i.e., the process of making connections between experiences in a unique and simultaneous way) (Hager, 2008).
Metaphors used by other forms of psychotherapy (e.g., de Shazer, 1982; Haley, 1988; Minuchin, 1981; Satir, 1972/1990) do not possess kinesthetic elements that are the basis of adventure therapy experiences.
Bacon (1983, 1987) provided a valuable bridge for the use of metaphors in the development of adventure therapy experiences. In creating such experiences, he stated that four key components must occur for the metaphor to be effective. The metaphor must: (1) be compelling enough to hold the individual’s attention (i.e., it must be related with appropriate intensity), (2) have a different successful ending/resolution from the corresponding real-life experience, (3) be isomorphic, and (4) be related in enough detail that they can facilitate a student’s “transderivational search” (i.e., a process first described by Carl Jung where the client attaches personal meaning to archetypical experiences). Bacon stated that when these four conditions are met, adventure experiences provide more successful resolutions to formally unproductive and dysfunctional behaviors, creating opportunities for positive therapeutic change within clients (Bacon, 1987).
