The Use of Dramatic Metaphor in Kahneman’s Psychology

Abstract

Psychological discourse is filled with metaphors—mental life being resistant to easy objectification. Metaphors can lose their as if qualification with the passage of time, so that an unexamined metaphor assumes mythic status and this can be stultifying. In his recent book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman proposes fresh metaphors for the processes of making choices, assessing satisfaction, and constructing plans of action. Kahneman proposes two systems within us—one fast and one slow—and two selves, one that experiences and another that remembers—inexactly, of course. This work is an example of the value of new and powerful metaphors in opening the way to new understandings of the science of mental life.