The Power of Metaphor

Out of the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D.

The Power of Metaphor

When we hold stubbornly to our current view of reality, that view can't be changed by intellectual understanding alone. We need to get to the "right-brain" functions -- our more holistic, creative, spontaneous, nonverbal metaphorical selves. A metaphor is any communication -- verbal or nonverbal -- that uses analogies and symbols to create new meaning. This new way of looking at things can push us into a new reality. There's so much gold buried in each of us that can be accessed symbolically -- in dreams, projections, or artistic expressions such as poetry. Elizabeth Wagele demonstrates the Enneagram through music, with illustrations from Beethoven's life and excerpts from Beethoven's piano sonatas. Jungian therapists use active imagination to translate emotions into images, and I've imitated Jung himself by using the I Ching (Chinese Book of Changes). A board certified and licensed clinical counselor I know uses astrology as metaphor in his work with clients.

When logic hasn't worked with clients, I look for anything that might take them to a symbolic level -- through stories, humor, poetry, or even gifts. Some examples:

I gave Ted -- a very articulate, literate, and creative One -- a box of magnetic poetry, along with the injunction that he could chastise others whenever he felt they deserved it, but then he needed to create a poem about them. I told him "I don't know if you'll ever ever actually do what I'm asking, but that's not the point about gifts of metaphor. This image is so strong it will stick and somehow change you."

Michael (a Two) came to realize he was doing the CEO's dirty work at budget time and alienating his colleagues -- even when he didn't agree with the boss's directions -- because he liked being the power behind the throne. Just back from a trip to Mexico, I gave him a bandito puppet on strings as a metaphor for letting his boss pull his strings. He named it "Miguel" and sat it in a prominent place on his office bookshelves so he wouldn't forget.

One of my female Three clients had been given a copy of Kathleen Noble's The Sound of A Silver Horn by a mutual friend. I gave her a toy horn I'd painted silver and included the following excerpt from Noble's book:

There comes a moment in each quest cycle where a woman finds herself poised on the brink of transformation... the pivotal decision to embark upon an extraordinary journey of self-discovery... each quester who wins her way through to the portal of transformation must discard some part of herself in order to create a larger self and give birth to her own possibilities:

Better to see your cheek grown hollow,
Better to see your temple torn,
Than to forget to follow, follow,
After the sound of a silver horn.
(Elinor Wylie, "Madman's Song," Collected Poems, 1932)

In the introduction to his book, Waking Up, Charles Tart writes, "We need to awaken to reality, the reality of the problems caused by our fragmented selves, so we can discover our deeper selves and the reality of our world, undistorted by our entranced condition." I gave this book to a Four who was particularly entranced in his moody withdrawal from the reality of his organization's culture. I suggested he place it face-out on the book shelf across from his desk, so the title would remind him to "wake up."

A CEO who's a Five needed to spend more time connecting with people -- more "management by walking around." A withdrawing type, she found this very, very difficult. She was a life-long sailor who described her most profound moments to occur at sunset on her boat -- a time when she was most deeply in touch with her own emotions and higher purpose. I gave her a small ship in a bottle to symbolize both the potential of her affection and how "bottled up" she kept her emotions.

One of the Sixes I coached kept herself conflicted about the actions of her peers, so we personified each of them with finger puppets, though she made me promise not to tell anyone we played with dolls in her office. We started with her opinion about those she disliked the most, isolating their negative characteristics and giving each to a finger puppet: "officious," "cold fish," "gets the drop on you," etc. After some work exploring these negative opinions as projections, she was able to own those characteristics in herself. She then transformed each finger puppet to represent the same cluster of traits but with positive characteristics: "well-spoken / articulate," "tremendous capacity for work / detail," "technically skilled / smart / capable," etc.

I often use symbolic prizes with teams, such as T-shirts with relevant slogans or toys that represent Enneagram dynamics. In an article on team-work I give more examples. One not mentioned there is the T-shirt I gave a Seven depicting a frog that urged, "Kiss me...I'm a prince!" This was a much easier (and to match the Seven's style, more amusing) way to get at his narcissistic behaviors than direct feedback from his team-mates -- which would probably have raised his defenses.

An Eight I coached was particularly interested in opening up his soft side. He knew how tender he was and how protective he was of his team. He also knew he could get outrageously angry in staff meetings (an ENFP on the MBTI), but he thought others over-reacted to his outbursts. It was difficult for him to step outside of himself and observe how intimidating he could be. So I gave him a teddy bear with glued-on, paper teeth (Tom Condon originated "teddy bear with teeth" for Eights). Also, read the Eight Case Description to see how we used water pistols to change his assumptions about power.

One of my clients had a triple-whammy problem with distractibility -- not only was she an Enneagram Nine, but an ENTP, and also has adult ADD. All of these together made it almost impossible for her to stay focused and to finish things she started. I gave her a sandalwood prayer bead necklace I'd had for many, many years and asked her to hold it in her hand when she had a project to finish.

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