Metaphor and Self: Symbolic Process in Everyday Life

This study describes the symbolic process by which individuals attempted to realize, in organizational form, their variant interpretations of an extended metaphor—community mental health. Their metaphoric construals were embedded in everyday discourse and were initially unrecognized by participants at a community mental health center. The metaphoric process, that is, the movement involving the emergence, interpretation, and realization of these metaphors, was mediated by the self‐images of the participants. They had embarked upon an innovative project to realize, in part, an ideal sense of self. The latter was a key factor in the development of new construals of community mental health and the implementation of these construals. [metaphor, symbolic process, self, mental health]