Sam's Black Dog

A puzzling mental-health metaphor harks back to one of English literature’s heavyweights.

- Marc Wilson

The idea for this column comes from a conversation with a few of my colleagues on a project looking at pet ownership and mental health.

To cut to the chase, the topic of animals and metaphor came up. Metaphors are very useful tools when we’re teaching, because they help make sense of things in a way that people can relate to. In therapy, they can provide a vocabulary for talking about something while not talking about that thing. Some strands of talk-therapy draw very heavily off a suite of metaphors that can describe where people are, where they are going and how they get there.

Here’s a pretty common mental health metaphor: the black dog. It’s also the name of a Wellington brewery that features playful titles for its beverages such as Pug Life and Mangoes into a Bar. It’s also the name of a Led Zeppelin song, a security company, and adorns the entrances of numerous cafes, bars and restaurants around the world.