: Introduces the foundational strategy for creating stories specific to therapeutic contexts.
Enhancing stories with sensory-based language to deepen the client's immersion.
Determine what psychological resource (e.g., boundaries, self-compassion, reframing) the client needs to move from the problem to the solution. Introduce this resource naturally into the plot of the story. david gordon therapeutic metaphors pdf
: Steps to identify the "problem state" and the "desired state". Adding Sensory Categories & Submodalities
Gordon introduced a specific methodology for creating "Isomorphic" metaphors—stories that share the same structure as the client's problem but different content. : Introduces the foundational strategy for creating stories
Once there was a master architect in a city divided by a great canyon. For years, he had built magnificent towers on the North Side, but he felt his work had become rigid and grey. He looked across the mist to the South Side, where builders worked with vibrant, flowing glass, yet he feared that moving there would mean losing everything he had already built.
[Analyze Client Problem] ➔ [Translate to New Setting] ➔ [Introduce Resource/Shift] ➔ [Resolve Narrative] Introduce this resource naturally into the plot of the story
(1978), provides a systematic framework for the intentional use of storytelling in psychotherapy. It shifted the use of metaphor from an "intuitive wizardry" to a learnable clinical skill.