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A model is only a more-or-less sophisticated metaphor for understanding some part of the world. When physicists describe the behavior of an electron as a “particle,” it leads naturally to some kinds of understandings and predictions, and tends to exclude others. When physicists describe an electron as a “wave,” they discover understandings and applications that are not available to them when thinking of an electron as a particle. What is an electron “really”? Undoubtedly neither a “wave” nor a “particle.” Hopefully someday someone will come up with a new metaphor that comes closer to describing what an electron “really” is, and which yields deeper and more extensive understandings. Some physicists are now using the metaphor of a “string,” which has both particle and wave qualities, and holds forth the possibility of integrating the understandings that have been gained from both the particle and wave models, and perhaps may suggest new understandings. I am not sufficiently educated about contemporary physics to know how useful this new description has been to date.
Freud's thinking about feelings and emotions was based on a hydraulic or “plumbing” metaphor (following Descartes' theory of how the brain worked). He thought of feelings as being fluids that were stored, and if they were pushed down in one area of life they would squirt out somewhere else. Primal therapy, an offshoot, spoke of a “primal pool of pain” that could be “drained” by screaming.
In contrast, the NLP metaphor is that of an information system that stores information as recorded memories in one or more representational systems, corresponding to the five senses. It is only when these records are activated that feelings result from them (if they are meaningful). If the memory is never activated, no feelings are stimulated. A CD player has lots of records of music, but it is only when the laser beam reads these records that there is music. If we used the Freudian metaphor to describe this, we'd say that the CD is full of music struggling for expression (catharsis). Thinking of a person as an information system makes it clear why catharsis not only doesn't work but can make many problems worse, or even create new ones. Although the information system metaphor has been much more useful than the Freudian plumbing metaphor, yet another one (not yet discovered) may prove to be even better.
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