This volume is organized around the view that metaphor is an important cognitive process. Metaphor can no longer be considered the sole domain of language, although this is one important research domain as some of the chapters in the volume demonstrate. The chapters reflect the modern history of metaphor, and cover many of the ways metaphor is conceptualized and applied. The book also explores a number of functions and characteristics, and implications of the metaphoric process, including that metaphoric processes originate in a sensory-motor-affective matrix; that they may be based in a neurological substrate; that they are manifested developmentally in various forms; that cognitively the comprehension of metaphor may depend on an abstract, featureless conceptual base; that they figure significantly in some pathological syndromes and in therapeutic discourse.

This volume combines research findings and personal experience of an ACoA, reviewing and critiquing the controlled research literature and clinical findings. Chapters dispel the myths and unsupported claims regarding ACoAs and alcoholic families, including excessively high rates of child abuse, the over-prediction of serious effects of being an ACoA, and the disease model of alcoholism.