Synesthesia previously mentioned in 2015 post on subjectively experienced metaphors

August 3, 2015

Subjectively Experienced Metaphors (SEMs): Rather than being analogies, some metaphors are subjective experiences; e.g., synesthesia or multiple personality

Most people think of metaphors as analogies or connections between previously unrelated things, which may be true for most metaphors. However, some metaphors may reflect actual subjective experiences.

One such type of metaphor, synesthetic metaphors, may reflect the writer’s synesthesia. For an outline of the types of synesthesia—actual subjective experiences on which certain metaphors could be based—see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia.

Another category of metaphor is personification. An example would be to attribute a human voice, with a mind of its own, to a fictional character, as when a novelist, in an interview, says, “When I heard the character’s voice, and the character came alive to me, I knew I had a novel.”

That is usually considered metaphorical, since “everyone knows” that characters don’t really exist or have voices or minds of their own that the novelist actually hears. But what if novelists say they actually do hear a voice in their head? And what if, according to novelists, the voice says things that the novelist hadn’t thought of? If novelists actually do have those subjective experiences, is what they say in interviews a metaphor?

(As readers of this blog know, I consider autonomous characters with minds of their own to be equivalent to alternate personalities in multiple personality.)

Well, in one sense it is a metaphor, but in another sense it isn’t. It is a metaphor, because characters don’t really exist. It is not a metaphor, because novelists honestly feel that they are reporting an experience.

The only name for this that I’ve thought of is: Subjectively Experienced Metaphors (SEMs). Maybe you can think of a better name. Or maybe there already is a name for this that I haven’t heard.