Attribution:
When disputants attribute (negative) attributes to one another, this is believed to interfere with successful mediation. "I" statements, etc. recommended. This approach represents a metaphor that mediators operate in terms of, with the possible structure -- Mediation Process is a Machine in Operation; Smooth Operation is the Processing or Consumption of Standardized Materials;
Disputants who might make attributions are operating in terms of metaphors: People are Distinguishable Objects; Objects are Collections of Attributes; Attributes are Features that Fit or Don't Fit [therefore, People are Collections of Attributes that Fit or Don't Fit -?]

Perspective-Taking
When a person is able to "step outside" oneself and see self in situation, or take other's point of view, etc. Requires mapping from one domain to another (Neanderthals probably could not do this).
Seems related to to the ability to play and tell stories, e.g., using stuffed animals to depict (stories that relate to) one's own experience. When you play in this way, you have to open another space (for adults who don't do this readily, perhaps asking them to imagine a stage with the relevant characters on it; now tell them what to say, how to behave, and watch from outside).
Possible metaphore structure: Perspective is a Container with Certain Contents; Perspective is a Spotlight; Perspective is a Lense (looked through by a certain person, focused on a certain thing); Selfishness is Perspective of Self focusing On Self; [also probably metaphor of Self as discussed by Lakoff and Johnson, 1999].

Anger
Thought to lead to rigidity, lower cognitive (rational) ability, leap to judgment, selective attention.

Orality (Cees Van Woerkem, Orality in Environmental Planning, European Environment, Eur Env 12, 160-172, Wiley Interscience www.interscience.wiley.com)
Oral expression seems related to what some say is a primary reasoning mode in humans -- the narrative or story-telling mode. Orality accesses implicit view, ideas, etc. and can help create or generate new frames. Such new frames allow a joint perspective to be found and possible resolution of conflict.
In contrast, literacy [or literary format that is meant to be read, but often presented orally] is an explicit format more tied to position, rights, rules and fixed procedures. [Literacy may constitute a metaphor for bulleted, multi-factor, combinatorial argumentation -- presenting a multitude of factors (profile? recipe?) to support a unified, integrated solution. (Literacy is a difficult task; so maybe the metaphor will seem difficult or inaccessible.)]
Hadot's book, "What is Ancient Philosophy" describes Socrates' method as inseparable from the oral dialog between teacher and students; not words but how one lives in interaction and community. Plato's large volume of written works based on Socrates seemed to codify it into literary form, yet Plato also insisted on oral dialog as a basis. Philosophy is Stream of Life; Teaching-Learning is Talking; Teaching-Learning is Moving With Flow; Goal of Teaching is Revisiting/Bringing Into Contact/Touching Same Place (or flow) Again and Again (until you can move with it).
[Is literacy related to "connecting the dots", "fitting pieces of puzzle together," "getting the whole story"?]
Possible metaphor structure: Orality is a Stream; Literacy is a Sortable List...

Emotional Intelligence
Ability to recognize, perceive and express emotion; access, regulate it in self and others; also includes Perspective-Taking. Thought to be account for higher cognitive ability, that leads to more effective integrative (as distinct from distributive) negotiation ability; more positive emotion, creativity, cooperation.

Post Modern View of Rationality (see Wendell Jones key note)

Law is Rules Applied to Conflict; knowledge is for winning (having the trump card).

Justice
Distributive justice, Procedural justice, Interactional (personal) justice, Information justice.

Proximal and Distal Causation
See "Metaphors of Cause and Effect In Mediation" on lower right of Main Menu.

"Should", "Must", "Ought"
Can these be considered metaphors by evoking what will change for the better if imperatives or injunctions are followed?

Mediator Metaphors Applied to Multiple Issues Simultaneously:
In analyzing metaphor use in the corpus of expert mediators' writings it has been found that similar metaphors are used for conflict, the ongoing mediation, and for the mediator's professional development -- all simultaneously. For example, conflict is metaphorically understood as having structure of parts fitting together, the mediation process used to resolve conflict is metaphorically understood to haveing a similar kind of structure, and the mediator's skill development is likewise.

As parallels in an allied domain let us look at how two very different forms of psychotherapy are each understood using the journey metaphor -- psychoanalysis and brief psychotherapy.

Dingwall and Miller (2002) present similarities between solution-focused brief psychotherapy and mediation that are readily understood metaphorically as a journey. Before beginning, it is of interest to note that brief psychotherapy arose in a movement opposing psychoanalysis and other classic forms of psychotherapy. Those classic forms are premised on months or even many years of treatment where the therapist is the expert, the patient a passive recipient, and the emphasis put on past history as the source of current difficulties. Solution-focused brief psychotherapy seeks to vastly shorten the period of therapy, focus on practical improvements in the present and near-future, and capitalize on the client as an expert with applicable knowledge and skills.

To begin, Dingwall and Miller (2002) stress that brief therapy (and facilitative mediation) is intended to help clients "get on with their lives" (p 275). The implication is that clients are already actively moving forward in many ways based on their own competences. Although certain roadblocks or impasses may be impeding them at the moment, therapeutic questions and comments that help them reflect on how far they have come, and how they have already been able to negotiate other complexities successfully, will be effective in finding where they are on the map relative to their destination, seeing what alternative routes are available and getting back in the driver's seat.

Dingwall and Miller (2002) offer three particular techniques that characterize brief therapy and can be useful as well to mediatiors assisting clients in resolving conflict. Until one might begin to understand them metaphorically in terms of a journey, these techniques may seem somewhat arbitrary or ad hoc in their application.

The first technique is the use of "exception questions" such as, "When was this problem less severe or even absent?" When clients focus on a problem the therapist, by asking such a question as this, refocuses on those occasions when this problem or conflict was not such an obstacle and when, as a result, the clients more successfully reached their goal. In this way the therapist emphasizes forward movement that the clients' own skills have already made possible. This makes the problems or conflicts exceptions to an otherwise satisfactory course of action, and prompts clients to apply their existing knowledge so as to cope and move on.

The second solution-focused therapeutic technique is to ask "scaling questions" such as, "How would you rate where you are now (on a scale of 1 to 10) and what would be required for you to improve that rating by 1 point?" This is readily understood as what percent of the way are you toward your destination, and what ground needs to be covered (landmarks passed, way stations reached) to get closer by an additional 10%. Almost any issue, when "scaled" in this way, can be conceptualized in terms of a journey: If the issue is confidence, scaling it puts the client somewhere on a road between low and high confidence; if the issue is adequately caring for the children, scaling plots the current location on a map showing the steps necessary to reach adequacy. As with any trip through largely unfamiliar territory, the clients' clarity about where they are currently located and where they actually expect to end up will change as they express themselves and get feedback.

The third solution-focused brief therapy technique is the "miracle question" such as, "If you were to wake up tomorrow and had, by some miracle, gotten to where you want to go, what is the information you would rely on to tell you that you had actually gotten there?" The question moves clients ahead on their journey in a virtual sense so it can be thought about from a future point looking back. The therapist is likely to follow up with additional questions about the differences between pre- and post-miracle -- differences in location, surrounding circumstances, atmosphere, what can be seen from this vantage point, etc. This highlights what clients already know about their distination and, brings into conscious awareness relevant material that was unconscious or forgotten so that it can be used to further establish one's bearings, plot one's course and move forward.

Note how psychoanalysis contrasts with solution-focused psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis usually requires years of treatment, is based on developing a thorough understanding of the patient's past history, and depends upon the analyst's revered position and brilliance in making psychological interpretations. Nevertheless the journey metaphor is very useful in explicating the processes of psychanalysis just as it has been for understanding techniques in solution-focused psychotherapy. Casonato (2002) presents a metaphorical construction of the psychoanalytic experience as a journey.

First Casonato notes that in psychoanalysis the analysand and analyst join in a long-term, one-on-one venture that can be understood metaphorically as a kind of love relationship. It starts with the analysand and analyst agreeing to work together and ends after surveying and learning to understand a great expanse of territory together. So the venture of analysis is a journey.

But it is also a commitment to working together -- particularly through the transference relationship that occurs in psychoanalysis -- and can be better understood through the metaphor that maps such a love relationship as a journey. As the analysand's history and past experience is traversed, interpreted and better understood, the analyst uses this past history as a kind of metaphor for aspects of the analysand's transference relationship with the analyst. Thus the analysand has the opportunity to resolve problematic aspects of the past through the transference relationship developed with the analyst in the present. Psychoanalysis, then, is further understood as a journey through "transference territory."

Love is part of a profound and almost universal narrative in the West -- understood in terms of several conventional metaphors that are imbedded in the everyday concepts of our language and culture. The metaphors in terms of which love is understood have now been carefully studied and found to include the following: Love is a Physical Force, Love is a Patient, Love is Magic, Love is Madness, Love is War, Love is Collaborative Work of Art, along with Love is a Journey.

[How do these additional source domains combine? Love is understood to be all of these things. These multiple metaphors used to understand love are not transitive such that, for example, Physical Force is a Journey or a Journey is Magic. And if, as stated, analysis/transference is a Journey, to what degree is that the same maping, overlaping or redundant with Love is a Journey? Metaphors are not symetrical or reversable as are associations or similarities; i.e., a journey is not understood metaphorically as love. We must be careful not to imply, for example, that because psychoanalysis is a journey and love is a journey that therefore psychoanalysis is love.]

[Note with regard to terminology that we ought not to refer to the series of metaphors named above as "love metaphors". They are metaphors in terms of which love is understood. They are magic metaphors, physical force metaphors, etc. As I read it, metaphors are best named either as X is Y (where Y is the source that is mapped to X, the target) or less specifically by naming the source domain alone, but not by naming the target alone.)]

Lakoff, Johnson and others have detailed the several metaphors in terms of which love is conventionally understood, and thereby illustrate how new, varied and even creative and imaginative meanings can be constructed by combining the entailments of the several metaphors. For example, love is magic (e.g., "he cast a spell over her") and love is war (e.g., "he won her hand in marriage") so this facilitates any number of combinations (such as "his charm overcame her defenses"), some of which could be entirely original. [The assertion is that the existence of these linked metaphors in conventional understanding enables such combinations to seem coherent and plausible.]

Casonato reminds us that when a target domain such as love is understood in terms of several metaphors, not all of the entialments of each of the metaphors are automatically mapped to the target domain. Love is understood both in terms of the metaphor Love is a Collaborative Work of Art and the metaphor Love is a Journey. A journey has both active and passive aspects. A collaborative work of art may be more active than passive, so when it is evoked along with Love is a Journey, the more active aspects of the journey metaphor (planning, coordination, etc.) are likely to be understood and passive entailments masked. But If Love is a Journey is used in combination with Love is Madness, more passive aspects may be foregrounded (floating, sliding, turning up in unexpected places, etc.) and more active entailments masked. This, according to Lakoff & Johnson (1980) and other metaphor theorists, explains the organization of our conceptual systems more fully than is possible using simpler theories of concept formation through association, similarity and extension.

The argument goes further in suggesting that narratives of, in this example, love are structured in this way -- bringing certain experiences into the foreground and masking others. Those in the foreground are focused upon and come to define the experience. In psychoanalytic terms such narratives form the "character" of the analysand through structures that self-actualize over time. The analyst, through interpretations that subtly include certain metaphors in combination, can guide the transference (love) relationship with the analysand, foregrounding some entailments and masking others, and thereby modify existing narratives in favor of healthier ones.

Having laid this groundwork, Casonato then develops more fully his thesis, from the metaphors Love is a Journey and Psychoanalysis is a Journey, and from contemporary pschoanalytic literature on clinical practice where the experience of analysis resembles a destination-oriented love relationship between analyst and analysand, that both love and psychoanalysis are understood to be journeys. The source domain of journey aids understanding of love as a target domain. In turn, love becomes a source domain for understanding psychoanalysis as a target. Drawing on the rich interleaving of these metaphors, and others such as those mentioned above, the skilled analyst will use these narrative structures to guide the voyage through the analysand's past history, to give substance to the analysand's inner territory, and to create and explore viable pathways to a desirable future.

The narrative of the psychoanalytic journey interacts with the narrative of the love journey, combining to aid one's understanding and reasoning, especially of the elements of duration of therapy (journey), closeness of the analyst and analysand (travelers) in the analysis (vehicle), problems (detours, getting lost), blocks (obstacles to forward movement), changes in understanding (vantage point), common purpose of completing therapy (destination), maintaining one's purpose (keeping the destination in sight), transference (story of the journey). The terminology of travelling is commonplace in such therapy (distance or territory covered, bumpy or smooth condition of the road, crossroads, which way to turn or whether to turn back, going together or by separate ways, getting traction, spinning wheels, whether we're getting anywhere, taking a different tack, having wind at your back, clear sailing, downhill, uphill, weighted down, baggage, the impact of new surroundings, arriving at new vantage points, travelogue), etc., etc.). The "hidden dimensions" that psychoanalysis is intended to uncover for the analysand (phobias, characterological details) may be understood largely, if not entirely, in terms of metaphor.

On a trip, if you get stuck, you have three basic choices: (1) to work around, through, under or otherwise get past the difficulty, (2) stay where you are and remain at that point, or (3) abandon the trip and forego reaching the destination. These are precisely the options when therapy reaches impasse. This illustrates the dominance of the metaphoric mapping of journey in the understanding of therapy. It also illustrates structures of thinking, reasoning and understanding more complex than could be explained using associative or other theories of cognition or concept formation. This is especially true when you consider the many other correspondances of knowledge that can only be accounted for through metaphorical structuring and interleaving -- such as that between crazy drivers, crazy lovers and crazy (wild) therapists.

Casonato introduces additional metaphors for a love relationship that further round out the correspondance between therapy and a journey: The Love Relationship is a container (something one enters, gets into, is inside, in close quarters, requires intimacy, occupants end up in the same place, on same route, allows passage that is difficult or impossible without vehicle, may be exited) and Love Relationship is a Constructed Object (something built, doesn't exist spontaneously in nature, often has a plan or blueprint, foundation, weight-bearing elements, decorative or cosmetic elements, can be solid or flimsy and fragile, may need repair, patching up, shoring up, correct operation for best results).

Psychoanalysis uses interpretations not only of the analysand's narratives and descriptions, comments, associations, errors, etc, but especially of dreams. Casonato suggests that many, if not most, dreams are readily interpreted in terms of the journey metaphor and can reveal how well analysis is going and the analysand's experience of it.

[Questions arise: What about the content of the dreams? When for example, the analysand's dream includes trips in a car with someone like the analyst as driver, and the trip is rough, or they get lost, or they discover hidden landscapes, etc., we can see the relationship of the analyst and analysand, their common discoveries, difficulties, etc., but what about the content of the discoveries as they relate to the analysand's understanding and reorganization of experience? That is, the journey metaphor interpretation identifies issues about the passage through analysis, but may not say what the enough about what the issues are for the analysand, what has been troubling, what is clearer, etc.]

The analysts knowledge of the journey source domain helps him ask such questions as travelling alone or with others, who is driving, piloting, guiding, blocking, and how well? Up in the air, at sea, in jungle, in dark alley, basement? Is route clear of wild animals, snakes, pits? Are you lost, past the station, train missed, destination unknown, light at end of tunnel? Besides dreams, associations (divergence from path), side comments ("Is this boring to you?"), errors (wrong exit on way to session, wrong day), missed appointments (missed trains), asking for help (request to lend forgotten bus fare) -- all provide opportunities for analyst to "spin" the analysand's journey narrative out into important territory. [If the work of analysis is the journey trough transferance territory, then journey-related events like these "project" the analysand's characteristic issues from own life onto the life with the analyst (what talked about, what omitted, errors or stumbles in doing so.]

Casonato says that in metaphors there is an "implicit or potential narrative line, based on infantile models". Also, "Within the metaphor, the analyst can maneuver to make valid interventions in the course of therapy." And, "Were the therapist to make interventions centered exclusively on the journey metaphor, the result would be the kind of 'focalization' that is practiced in short-term therapy."

By focusing now on the how mediators, themselves, use metaphor to guide how they think about what to do in mediation, we accomplish two important things (1) becoming more aware of mediator intention, direction, and priorities, and (2) get valuable, first-hand practice in becoming sensitive to previously-unnoticed operating metaphor, which develops skill that can also be applied to clients.

That a particular mediator may have one or more metaphors operating while mediating may not be obvious at first.

To illustrate, consider the mediator as a human body in motion while mediating; look for movements the mediator makes, the movements made which affect the mediator, etc.:
Ask if the mediator is, for example, opening, receiving, expressing, creating structure (rules, guidelines), or obstacles, moving clients towards or away from certain locations, shaping things, etc.
Pulling, pushing, nudging, attracting, turning, pointing, orienting, lining up, opening their eyes, opening a path, bringing them..., giving them something they desie, something necessary to move on, loosening them up, disengaging, unattaching, getting them to accept certain things ("get" -?), moving them to different vantage points, moving them away from what?

Then, he says, it is possible better to know what metaphors are being used and whether to try to shift the linguistic frame. He says it is particularly apt to pick metaphors that reflect the tension between seemingly opposing ideas, such as "adversary" (when battle metaphor is in use) and "partner" (when "getting to yes" is the mode of operation). He recommends "counterpart" in this instance. "Negotiation", he says, etiologically derives from not being at leisure and "conflict" derives from hitting together and generally the senses of supporting and opposing.

The example metaphors he gives, that comprise the soup one finds oneself in, include
the animal kingdom (dog-eat-dog, hawks attacking doves, lions & lambs, baracudas),
kitchen with pies to be cut in pieces,
concerts with harmony or discord,
journeys with speed bumps, road blocks, detours,
bicycle needing momentum to keep going,
carpenter with toolbox,
engineer building bridges,
architect designing multidoor courthouses,
puzzle-cracking problem solver,
wise swordsman cutting through Gordian knots,
climbing decision trees.

Further, Cohen says that in our culture of argument, metaphors that dominate negotiation are competitive:
game of poker with cards held close to chest,
sport with level playing field, mediator umpires, time-outs, hardball,
military operations with weapons, Ramboesque, gladiators, shooting, marching orders,

Idealistic side of legal tradition, and second set of negotiation metaphors, offers more,
lawyer as problem-solver,
achieving own objectives without defeating other,
going beyond winning,

Negotiation as cooperation:
give and take
mutual dependence
common interests
partners in a dance
leading and following
steps and stages
takes two to tango
put self in other's shoes
don't step on toes
facing each other or side by side, shoulder to shoulder
mediator as choreographer (dance instructor)
go to balcony to observe
balance, grace

Metaphor is in constant use by mediators in explaining their work, as well as by those who are learning about mediation. This is the case not only because mediation deals with hidden processes, inner states, abstract concepts and other subjectively experienced matters that are unknowable objectively and only understood figuratively, but also because figurative language can communicate so much richness so quickly.

To illustrate how metaphor works in obvious and not-so-obvious ways in our conflict resolution literature, here are examples drawn almost at random from Christopher Moore's "The Mediation Process" (Moore, 1996), sometimes referred to as the "mediator's bible":

Psycholgical Moves are Physical Moves

Immediately following (pp.247-248), Moore outlines several ways to apply this figurative force; each of these begins with these words, "One negotiator can convince another..." After describing the four ways Moore concludes (p.247):

While mediators may have reflected on how they practice, have carefully decided on their approach and goals in mediation, and may have successfully integrated concepts from communications science, psychology and conflict resolution studies, truly significant aspects of their approach are probably unarticulated. The implicit parts are the assumptions and dynamic patterns unconsciously built into the metaphors governing how they think about mediators and mediation, conflict and dispute resolution.

che This would be another source of conflicting metaphors used in explaining and teaching the mediation process.

· Goals, method and procedure will be expressed in multiple metaphors. We are aware of "mixed metaphor" that may be considered aesthetically unsatisfactory. We are also aware of foregrounding and backgrounding… What of metaphors that are inconsistent or contradictory with one another in terms of such things as scope, direction or inference structure? Or those that are simply ambiguous? Are different metaphors used in the same discourse aligned, operating side by side without overlap, or in some kind of conflict? For example, specific metaphors may seem harmonious but their root or superordinate cases reveal incompatibility (e.g., "provide a path to self-selected solutions" evokes Resolution is Following a Path that, in turn, implies a pre-defined goal and constrains actual self-selection. Another example is when metaphors that foster clearly incompatible actions are used in separate parts of what is said, or are both given positive evaluations (e.g., (a) "the mediator identifies the range of practical possibilities," and (b) "the mediator opens exploration of all channels;" these two approaches are probably incompatible if done in the same frame.

· Correspondence between explicit statements and unstated (but metaphorically understood) assumptions. What of metaphor in opposition to literally stated tenants and values? Not just contradictions but perhaps missing links, voids, disconnects, discontinuities, or unexpected links between principals and procedures (theory and practice) might be found. Do the metaphors used seem actually to ground the explicit theory?

· Similarities and differences with other schools.

· What parts are novel extensions of everyday understanding (common sense) and what are not? How do the everyday and novel forms contrast? Metaphor and metaphor systems that are robust, elaborated and extended would make the complex process of mediation more lucid, accessible, verifiable, flexible and resilient.

· Metaphors lend a certain authenticity or common-sense reasonableness while not necessarily addressing questions of veracity. Are metaphors operating in this way and do they seem to be used to bolster literal claims in the absence of literal evidence?

When teaching about metaphors that clients use, how to detect them, clarify and extend them, participants often ask questions about procedure, appropriateness; they give examples of what they already do. For example, one mediator said that when clients aren't moving successfully towards a settlement, he tells a story about a donkey, a carrot and a stick. Another mediator asked whether it was appropriate to bring metaphoric material, largely unconscious, into conscious awareness without the permission of the client.

These questions switch point of view from that of clients to that of the mediator, and ask, "What metaphor relating to my role and behavior as a mediator is useful here?", or "As a mediator, what metaphor am I using?"

Put another way, when the subject matter is abstract and speakers and writers, inevitably and profusely, use metaphor, we may safely say that we will understand very little of what they mean if for some reason we do not comprehend the metaphors used. Much of what is said is not directly or concretely known. Because it is not known experientially it must be conceptualized metaphorically in terms of other things that are directly and concretely known. We may go further to say that the conventional metaphors may supply as much or more of the meaning as do literal statements.

When teaching about metaphors that clients use, how to detect them, clarify and extend them, participants often ask questions about procedure, appropriateness; they give examples of what they already do. For example, one mediator said that when clients aren't moving successfully towards a settlement, he tells a story about a donkey, a carrot and a stick. Another mediator asked whether it was appropriate to bring metaphoric material, largely unconscious, into conscious awareness without the permission of the client.

These questions switch point of view from that of clients to that of the mediator, and ask, "What metaphor relating to my role and behavior as a mediator is useful here?", or "As a mediator, what metaphor am I using?"