TITLE:
Schema Therapy: The Healthy Adult Meets Sherlock Holmes—An Enactivist and Embodied Cognition Perspective of Metaphor
AUTHORS:
Sebastian Salicru
KEYWORDS:
Schema Therapy, Healthy Adult, Sherlock Holmes, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Metaphor, Therapeutic Alliance, Case Con-ceptualization, Mindfulness
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.15 No.2,
February
29,
2024
ABSTRACT:
Background: Schema therapy (ST) is a proven effective treatment in chronic
psychopathology and has thus become a popular transdiagnostic treatment
approach among practitioners in recent times. Nonetheless, ST is not free of
theoretical criticisms, research gaps, and practical challenges. As a complex
model with a multiplicity of components and subcomponents, ST can be
challenging for therapists to learn, and for clients to use. Purpose: To
present the Sherlock Holmes metaphor as a highly suitable therapist-generated enactive
or embodied metaphor to explain to clients four key components and tasks: the
therapeutic alliance; case conceptualization; the practice of mindfulness; and
the role, functionality, and embodiment of the Healthy Adult (HA) mode. Method: Qualitative—literature review and vignette examples,
using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results: The
psychological linkages between theory and practice are elucidated, and the
therapeutic factors and mechanisms of change embedded in the use of enactive/embodied
metaphor are unpacked. Conclusion: The Sherlock Holmes metaphor is an
image schema that offers clients a vivid, powerful, and memorable anchor they
can use to evoke and enact their HA mode, as a positive psychological intervention to achieve their goals. For
psychotherapists, the Sherlock Holmes metaphor represents a
parsimonious, creative, and flexible device, aligned with the integrative
psychotherapy tradition, which they can blend into their own style and
practice. The paper contributes to the multiple nuances of ST, responds to
calls to understand the dynamics and signification of metaphor as action in
psychotherapy, and illustrates how imagination supports the mental ability to
respond to fictional characters.