This 3-part article contains a transcript for each of the two sessions where Penny Tompkins and James Lawley worked with a participant on a Symbolic Modelling training in 2001. The transcripts are annotated to explain some of the modelling involved and the purpose for each question. In part 3 the client describes - both in words and drawings - the changes she experienced during the sessions, and what happened in the following 6 months.

This article explains why metaphor is a natural way to describe illness and health, the importance of recognising patients'/clients' metaphors, and how working within these metaphors can activate an individual's personal healing process.

What do you do as a therapist, teacher, doctor or manager when your client, student, patient or colleague says "It's like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall" or "I'm so wound up I can't see straight" or "Things keep getting on top of me"? This article describes a way for individuals to discover how their metaphors are organized and, if they wish, what needs to happen for them to change so that they have a different perception of the world.

Over the past few years I've had the privilege of working with Heston Blumenthal, whose restaurant, The Fat Duck, was named the best restaurant in the world by The Restaurant magazine in 2005. Heston has given me his permission to touch on that part of our work that has used Symbolic Modelling in a generative frame.

Examples of using Clean Language to research the experiences of a number of groups dealing with the legacy of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland, including several community groups in Belfast, former members of the British Army, the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries.

The use of metaphor, images and Symbolic Modelling with survivors of torture is described through a case study. 'Nazim', a Kurd, suffered regular instances of detention and violence at the hands of Turkish authorities and forces before being referred to the Medical Foundation. Working through an interpreter Nazim was helped to come to terms with his experiences that were so painful that he had not told anyone, not even his family, before.

David Grove conducted the following Metaphor Therapy session in 1998 with a 46-year-old female who was undergoing intensive chemotherapy for cancer at the time. The verbatim transcript is a good example of how gentle yet effective David's work can be. Writing and transcription by Rob McGavock.

A 39-year old woman client presented in therapy with excessive feelings of guilt. The client did not know the aetiology of this invasive feeling that had gradually seeped into all areas of her life. This intervention from David Grove's early work switches quite rapidly from metaphor, memory and childwithin. It illustrates how to map the changing locus of attention; how to make sure all the information that is developed is woven back into the narrative, crossed over and transformed; and how to work with 'a nested childwithin'.