Metaphor therapy

Domain VI · Brief, integrative, trauma, hypnosis & coaching · Richard R. Kopp · 1995 · Los Angeles, California

What it is

Metaphor therapy is a structured interview for working with the metaphors clients use themselves, not stories or metaphors the therapist supplies. Kopp (1942–2012) was a clinical psychologist and Adlerian psychotherapist at the California School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles, and faculty…

Format

• Metaphor therapy does not set out treatment phases across a course of therapy. It is a within-session interview sequence that can be run whenever a usable metaphor appears, inside any ongoing therapy. Kopp describes two applications.
• Session count and format.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Flexibility. Kopp acknowledged that a linear stepwise model can feel constraining to experienced therapists, so the steps are a guide rather than a script.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• one member rewriting another's image. Each person changes only their own.
• your sketch adding content the client did not give. Draw only what they specify.
• substituting your story for theirs, which is the move the method is designed to avoid.
• correspondence mapping turning into the therapist decoding the image. Keep each mapping question open.
• the client's life failing to follow the changed image. Re-run steps 2–6 on the image as it stands now.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.