Physiological metaphor occupies a distinctive and theoretically charged position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning not merely as decorative rhetoric but as a structural mechanism through which inner states, psychological processes, and even cosmic orders are rendered intelligible. The range of treatments is remarkable. In the archaic Greek materials examined by Jaynes, Padel, and Caswell, physiological terms such as thumos, kradie, and phrenes are not metaphors applied to pre-existing concepts but rather the original organs of psychic experience — the body generating the very vocabulary of interiority. Rank traces this logic forward into anatomical nomenclature itself, showing that Western medical terminology preserves cosmological and mythological projections from ancient Eastern systems. Porges, writing from neurophysiology, reclaims the term with precision, proposing that the vagal system constitutes a ‘physiological metaphor’ for emotional regulation — here the body is not merely a source domain for psychological language but actively models the structure of affect. Damasio approaches the same territory through the skin and viscera, illustrating how popular idioms unwittingly encode physiological truth. The deep tension in the corpus runs between literalism and metaphoricity: pre-Aristotelian thinkers, as Padel shows, did not distinguish them, using bodily images as explanations rather than as figures of speech. This unresolved boundary — where the somatic ends and the symbolic begins — is what makes physiological metaphor indispensable to depth-psychological inquiry.
the possibility exists that the vagal system may provide a physiological metaphor for the regulation of emotion states. Individual differences in vagal tone may index organis
Porges explicitly proposes that vagal tone functions as a ‘physiological metaphor’ — a somatic index whose structural properties model the dynamics of emotional self-regulation.
, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, 2011thesis
Saying that the internal sensations of large circulatory and muscular changes are a thing into which strength can be put is to generate an imagined ‘space,’ here located always in the chest, which is the forerunner of the mind-space of contemporary consciousness.
Jaynes argues that Homeric physiological terms (thumos as container) are the generative metaphors from which inner psychological space — and ultimately consciousness — is constructed.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis
our own anatomical nomenclature is built up on the Eastern system of anatomical cosmology or topography, which mythologically interprets the various points or organs of man (and of animals) as those of a microcosm.
Rank demonstrates that anatomical terminology itself preserves ancient physiological metaphors in which bodily organs function as microcosmic mirrors of macrocosmic, mythological reality.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis
Hippocratic writers, using figurative comparisons to state a theory about the body, often follow the ‘as’ of the illustration by an emphatic ‘in this way,’ as if the comparison proved the theory.
Padel shows that in pre-Aristotelian Greek thought, physiological metaphor was not recognized as metaphor at all — the bodily image served directly as explanation, collapsing the distinction between figure and fact.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994thesis
A coward in the Iliad is not someone who is afraid, but someone whose kradie beats loudly (13:282). The only remedy is for Athene to ‘put’ strength in the kradie (2:452)
Jaynes illustrates how Homeric psychology locates emotional states physiologically — courage and cowardice are conditions of the beating heart, not interior mental states.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
the description of the cppEvEc; in relation to the heart is based on at least a crude observation. Physiology, cont.: At XVI 481, the cppEvEc; are said to surround the heart.
Caswell establishes that early Greek psychological terminology (phrenes) is grounded in anatomical observation, forming the empirical substrate from which physiological metaphors of emotion and cognition arise.
, A Study of Thumos in Early Greek Epic, 1990supporting
‘I’ve got you under my skin’ unwittingly captures this important physiological idea and the lyric would have been even more accurate if Cole Porter had written, ‘I’ve got you in the thick of my skin’
Damasio demonstrates that popular physiological metaphors in everyday language often encode genuine somatic truths about temperature regulation and bodily intimacy.
, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, 1999supporting
metaphor is not a mere extra trick of language, as it is so often slighted in the old schoolbooks on composition; it is the very constitutive ground of language.
Jaynes establishes the foundational theoretical claim that metaphor — including physiological metaphor — is not ornamental but constitutive of language and thus of consciousness itself.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
several canals, so that the streams of the veins, emerging from the heart as from their source, can flow in these narrow channels of the human body.
Derrida traces the hydraulic physiological metaphors embedded in philosophical language about circulation, showing how somatic imagery structures philosophical and scientific discourse at its foundations.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
If the metaphor really hits you, it gives you goose pimples; you say, ‘Ah, that’s it, that’s it, yes.’ The whole being is momentarily brought into a sense of wholeness
Woodman, citing Jung, argues that effective metaphor operates simultaneously on mental, imaginative, and emotional-somatic levels, with its healing power confirmed by a distinctive physiological response.
, Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman, 1993supporting
many of the metaphors are now dead: in other words, there is no felt gap between the use we make of each such word in daily life and the anchor in embodied reality from which it derives its meaning.
McGilchrist argues that dead metaphors have lost their felt physiological grounding, suggesting that living metaphors retain a somatic anchor in embodied reality processed primarily by the right hemisphere.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
soul-as-metaphor leads beyond the problem of ‘how to define soul’ and encourages an account of the soul toward imagining itself rather than defining itself.
Hillman reframes the entire problem of soul by treating metaphor as the soul’s constitutive mode of self-expression, displacing physiological or literal definitions in favor of imaginal self-articulation.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983supporting
Finding in understandings of disease either a conscious or an unconscious metaphor is not a new idea. The concept is an ancient one, and also one intriguingly revived in twentieth-century cultural analysis.
Kurtz notes the longstanding cultural practice of using disease — a physiological phenomenon — as metaphor for moral and social conditions, illustrating the persistent traffic between body and symbolic meaning.
, Not God A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2010aside
The spill is a metaphor for Mairs’s interrupted life, but the sticky brown puddle is literal. Thus with regard to metaphor I find most useful Schafer’s observation that metaphor establishes a storyline
Frank illustrates how illness narrative entangles physiological events with metaphorical meaning, using a spilled puddle to show how body-events simultaneously function as literal occurrence and psychological figure.
, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, 1995aside