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Creativity Tip 27 – Creativity and Metaphor

The word ‘inspiration’ is a metaphor for creativity and I think it’s a good one: the incoming breath brings in new air, available with only the most minimal involuntary exertion - as natural as life itself.

Metaphor, a very useful tool in creativity, is a great way of taking a different view of a problem or challenge, which allows us to make both the strange familiar and the familiar strange. How is this useful?

If we’re faced with a difficult situation that is hard to understand, a useful creative act is to make the strange familiar; bringing a problem that is difficult to work with into a more familiar arena both makes understanding and inferences easier, and creative leaps more possible.

Here are a few examples:

1. Einstein performed 'thought experiments' and played with the idea of riding on a beam of light when developing his theory of relativity.
2. An engineer, looking for a way to hold together a multi-part machine in a high-vibration environment, takes the metaphor of shivering with cold and comes up with ideas for encasing the system in a flexible jacket.
3. A scientist is investigating the way a virus behaves in attaching itself to a healthy cell. Using the metaphor of rape, she explores notions of trauma, repulsion and revenge by the attacked organism.
4. There is a famous story of explorers, lost in unfamiliar mountains, who found their way out using a map - only to find later that they were using a map of a completely different area.

When a familiar situation anchors us into familiar thoughts, we can sometimes break free from the mental straightjacket by forcing the familiar situation into an unfamiliar and badly-fitting metaphor. The natural thought process of analysing where this does and doesn’t work well can lead to the subconscious leaping to an innovative solution or way out.

Some examples follow below:

1. A product designer for desktop printers takes the viewpoint of a tiny Napoleon Bonaparte - marching around inside the printer, issuing orders, capturing territory and forcing the paper to go in any direction.
2. A soldier, drilled in battlefield technique but perplexed by a hidden enemy, closes his eyes and navigates by sound only, working with an internal sonic landscape to pinpoint the source of weapon fire.
3. A philosopher, musing about the mind but trapped by traditional cognitive psychological views of the brain's operation, uses a metaphor of a game of darts as a mind. She then explores intent, near misses, 'bulls-eyes', ricochets, match-play and so on.
4. A woman in a difficult marriage takes the viewpoint that her husband is a horse (strong, a bit wild and races around too much). Then, with some coaching, considers that a horse does not judge or betray; it just is. Also, that a horse is always present and in the moment. The understanding of the need to be present, honest, true and confident in order to get a horse to be responsive led the couple to set goals of becoming more calm, assertive, present and attentive in their relationship - leading to a thriving marriage.

Useful information about metaphors

Metaphors basically say 'A is B', which can be compared to similes which say 'A is like B' and analogies which offer a vaguer linkage between A and B.

There is a stronger association between A and B in metaphor. B is effectively overlaid and A, and everything about B is attributed to A. Thus A effectively becomes B. Similes are constrained in that the word 'like' or 'as' is explicitly used. In analogy, the association is much weaker. Parts of B may be compared with parts of A, but B is not considered to be the same as A. To summarise:

• Metaphor: All the world's a stage
• Simile: The world is like a stage
• Analogy: People may treat the world as their stage

The power of metaphor

If I say, 'you look like a rock’, then I am placing some of the visual attributes of a rock on you. If, however, I say 'you are a rock’, then I am saying that you are a rock in all ways, and that all attributes that a rock has, you have. It then describes you at an identity level.

The power of metaphors is in the way that they change the subject by bringing new thinking and ideas, extending and changing the way that we think about something.

Limitations of metaphors

The power and the limitation of the metaphor is the way that the metaphor brings not just a little bit of understanding but a whole world. When you say 'I am a rock, you bring the entire world of ‘rockness’ to the subject.

There can be an underlying assumption that the metaphor is totally correct. This can be a limitation and a trap, as you may want to bring some attributes but not some of the less desirable ones. Metaphors must thus be used with care. If I say 'you’re a butterfly, then ‘butterfly’ effectively replaces 'you', and all of you becomes all of a butterfly. This is the downside of working at the identity level.

Creativity coaching can help with your thinking, so you can find more connections to successful ways of achieving your goals and dealing with your challenges.

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