Why psychologists need maps

Metaphorical or associative cards are a set of pictures the size of a playing card or a postcard with realistic images (this can be a photograph of a house, road or river) or abstract images. Maps are a professional psychological tool based on working with a visual metaphor.

At the sight of this or that picture, each person has his own set of associations, memories and fantasies, which the psychologist then interprets.

Metaphorical cards help to find out what is the true reason for the anxiety of a person who has turned to a psychologist?

Maps are not a diagnostic tool, but a way of observing. I’ll give you this metaphor: imagine a boy walking into a room holding a pink ball. He starts playing with him, throws him to us, kicks him, then hugs him and cries. Looking at his actions, we can draw some conclusions about the state of the child. But the conclusions are still based on our observations, and the ball is just a tool.

Metaphorical cards are like this pink ball – they help us observe the client and make contact with him. And the client is helped to interact with himself, different parts of his personality – to contact each other.

We see how the conventional boy handles the ball, we see his attitude to the subject. How are cards handled? How do they help the therapist understand something about the client?

Here is an example. Yesterday a woman contacted me about a difficult situation in the family – her relationship with her child, with her mother, with everyone at once went wrong. I gave her a typical exercise: choose from a deck of portraits of people who remind her of members of her family. Not superficially reminiscent, but in essence. She chose for a long time, thoughtfully, then, at my request, she laid out these portraits on the table so that the distance between the cards corresponded to the degree of spiritual closeness of her relatives.

And suddenly, in the process, she discovered that she had not chosen herself, her portrait. “Where are you?” I ask. “But I forgot about myself.” And she suddenly realized this: “So this is really about my life. I tend to take care of everyone, but no one takes care of me. And I don’t think about myself.” And here are her own conclusions – this is the most valuable thing for me.

Existential psychologists also use them. For example, helping a person with emotional burnout to return the meaning to work further, a psychologist can offer such an exercise. Asks the client to choose a card that characterizes his position at work, his role in the work process now. Then – choose a card that shows his former, at the very beginning of the work. Then the psychologist invites the client to evaluate the difference and think: how does he see his future career?

When a person looks at the cards (and 90% of us are dominated by visual perception) and tells why he chose them and arranged them that way, then in the process of the story he himself often finds the answer. And then we can lay out his next steps from the cards, and the client understands what needs to be done to make the dream a real, achievable goal.

And if a person has no dreams and generally no idea about his future?

Maps help to see it. I once worked with a 12-year-old boy, Serezha, who successfully underwent chemotherapy, and the problem with his discharge from the hospital was not so much his physical condition, but his mental one. He changed a lot in appearance: a handsome golden-haired boy turned into a bald, plump man with a puffy, moon-shaped face. Serezha was afraid to leave the hospital for the outside world, and it was necessary to somehow overcome his fear of returning to normal life.

And then we went back to his portrait from the future, and he was able to compose it. The portrait turned out to be lively, optimistic, nice. If at first Seryozha accepted himself only in the past, now he admitted that he also likes himself in the future. He left the hospital feeling confident. Spent the whole week exactly according to our plan, and he was comfortable. What happened here? Life scared him with its uncertainty. And when Seryozha saw what events each day would be filled with, he felt good and calm. The cards helped make the future certain and attractive.

Are different cards suitable for different tasks and goals?

In general, any metaphorical cards are suitable for solving any problems. But it is logical, when it comes to promotion, to use maps depicting roads and paths. There is nothing irrational, magical in these cards. They are based on the traditional projection mechanism. It is launched when a person meets any object. But at the moment of thinking about moving through life, for example, maps depicting roads, forks, paths will help start this process faster.

The therapist and his client may interpret the same card in different ways. Does it interfere with work?

Of course, when looking at the map, different projections work for me and for the client, and this is the main insidiousness of metaphorical maps. That is why you need to learn how to work with them. It is very important that the psychologist understands that his personal projections have nothing to do with the projections of the client. Someone sees a cute girlish bouquet in the picture, and someone sees a funeral wreath. And if the psychologist does not understand the meaning that the client gives to the card, if it somehow annoys him, hurts him, this is definitely not the client’s problem, but it’s time for the psychologist to have personal therapy. Therefore, sometimes it is better for a psychologist not to even look at the map, so as not to give the client his projections and not confuse him. Misinterpretation can lead your work to the wrong place.

When can cards not be used?

I do not use them when working with clients with mental disorders, borderline conditions, epilepsy. In this case, the specialist’s task is to bring them back to reality, put them on the ground, and metaphors here will be harmful. Maps are useless when working with children of primary preschool age – they have concrete thinking, they see in the image on the map only what is drawn there. Figurative, associative thinking develops closer to elementary school, and even then not for everyone. And among adult clients there are those who have poorly developed figurative thinking, who do not perceive visual images.