Creative Metaphors, Synchronicity, and Quantum Physics

Philosophy and Rhetoric 44 (2):101-128 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this work, I argue that creative metaphors are formed when some persistent problem, caused by an inadequacy in preexisting knowledge, descends into the collective unconscious, is reconfigured unconsciously in novel ways, and then reemerges back into consciousness where the impasse is resolved by the metaphorical expression of new knowledge. To develop this position, I (1) review and critique some well-known language-based studies of metaphor, (2) summarize psychoanalytic and depth psychological approaches to the psyche as one way to overcome the shortcomings of the language-based scholarship, (3) relate C. G. Jung's account of the psyche and his related notion of synchronicity to creative metaphors, (4) graft a quantum physics approach to material reality back onto Jung's work as a provisional structure of the collective unconscious, and finally, (5) offer some suggestions about how creative metaphors might work psychologically.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Metaphors we live by.George Lakoff & Mark Johnson - 1980 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Mark Johnson.
Feminist ethics and the metaphor of AIDS.Susan Sherwin - 2001 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 26 (4):343 – 364.
Pain and its Metaphors: A Dialogical Approach. [REVIEW]Stephen Loftus - 2011 - Journal of Medical Humanities 32 (3):213-230.
Metaphor in the Mind: The Cognition of Metaphor.Elisabeth Camp - 2006 - Philosophy Compass 1 (2):154-170.
Kierkegaard's metaphors.Jamie Lorentzen - 2001 - Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press.
Kant’s Metaphors for Persons and Community.Diana E. Axelsen - 1989 - Philosophy and Theology 3 (4):301-321.
Metaphor.Marga Reimer & Elisabeth Camp - 2006 - In Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language. Oxford University Press. pp. 845.
Metaphor and that certain 'je ne sais quoi'.Elisabeth Camp - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 129 (1):1 - 25.
The metaphor of mental illness.Neil Pickering - 2006 - New York: Oxford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-05-22

Downloads
139 (#123,604)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Metaphors We Live By.George Lakoff & Mark Johnson - 1980 - Ethics 93 (3):619-621.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order.David Bohm - 1981 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 32 (3):303-305.
The Philosophy of Rhetoric.I. Richards - 1937 - Philosophical Review 46:676.
Metaphor and Thought.Andrew Ortony & Israel Scheffler - 1981 - Mind 90 (359):448-452.

View all 6 references / Add more references