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Article published In:
Metaphorical creativity across modes
Edited by Laura Hidalgo-Downing and Blanca Kraljevic Mujic
[Metaphor and the Social World 3:2] 2013
► pp. 141–159

Crazy creative metaphors

Crazy metaphorical minds?

| University of California, Santa Cruz

This article presents an analysis of public interviews with the American actor Charlie Sheen during a difficult time in his life when he appeared to be speaking and acting crazy. Sheen’s metaphoric descriptions of his life mostly referred to common conventional metaphoric concepts. However, closer examination of the metaphoric discourse revealed that he characterized his life and thoughts using various allegorical themes, most of which relate to fantasy characters, and thought of himself as a special destructive machine. Sheen may possibly have been experiencing the symptoms of certain mental disorders. But we argue that his metaphoric discourse was creative and coherent through his engaging in allegorical thought which is grounded in common embodied simulation processes.

Keywords: creativity, metaphorical minds, metaphor
Published online: 14 February 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.3.2.02gib
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