Metaphorical conceptualizations of the body in psychopatology and poetry

Abstract

The goal of our study is to identify several conceptualizations of the body expressed in the contexts of psychopathology and literature. We propose a specific categorization of literary sentences drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; 1999) and Context-Limited Simulation Theory (Ritchie 2003; 200; 2008). Based on corpus data, we show that in psychiatric manuals the physical body is always reasoned in metaphoric terms of the BODY-CONTAINER category, thus with a high degree of non-specific attributes. In psychoanalysis manuals, the body is represented by “sexual-sensual sentences” or by abstract “notions”. Italian poetry offers an additional representation of the body with special focus on the organs and other body parts like “heart,” hand(s)”, “face”, but also “blood”, “chest”, “arm(s),” “eye(s)”,“breast(s)”, “head,” “flesh,” “skin”.