Two project Ideas

I would like to do an analysis of the metaphors used in psychology from a variety of authors ranging from Freud, Maslow and Jung to some more modern Gestalt authors such as Perls.  In doing this I want to see if the scientific paradigm they are in has an effect on the metaphors they use.  For example since Freud lived in a Newtonian paradigm are his metaphors rooted in the same paradigm and if so is his expressed ideas also limited to that metaphorical scope.  I also want to look for what i will call metaphorical isotropes, meaning metaphors that are attempting to describe the same thing.  Much like isotopes carbon can have many isotopes but it is still carbon, the self can have many metaphors from Newtonian physics and hydraulics to ecological and quantum mechanical.  I am interested in this because the metaphors we use both make possible and necessarily restrict what we are able to mean.  I want to understand how we mean because how we mean affects and possibly effects what we are able to mean.

Or, I want to analyze the metaphorical structure of subcultures existing today.  This would be based off of the books Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson and Mythologies by Roland Barthes.  The idea here is that our current mythologies are stored and expressed by our metaphors which are historically situated, we say I see what you mean because vision became the primary means of knowing the world in the 18th century.  The metaphors we use not only shape our ideas of ourselves and how we interact with Levinas' others but also our sensed lived experience of the world.

Either way I am interested in how we mean and the ways how we mean affects or even effects what we are able to mean and I believe metaphor is an important and narrow enough meaning technology to explore this within.