Metaphorical Perceptions of “Violence” among Students of Psychological Counselling and Guidance

Abstract

It is seen that violence has been escalating across the globe. In parallel with the increase worldwide, violence takes place at larger scales especially in the geography we live in due to reasons such as wars, terrorism, domestic violence and school violence. Based on these harrowing experiences, we often see the news about violence in the media, social media, and on TVs. Exposure to such excessive violence seems to normalize the violence and leads to decreased awareness. The purpose of this study is to determine how violence is perceived by the preservice school counsellors (i.e., students enrolled in a psychological counselling and guidance training program) who, as school counsellors, are to take part in the efforts at schools to prevent violence.  Accordingly, the present study is aimed at identifying the metaphorical perceptions of violence amongst the students enrolled in the Department of Psychological Counselling and Guidance, Necmettin Erbakan University.  In the study, the research data was collected, analysed and interpreted using qualitative and quantitative research methods. In order to find out what kind of perceptions they have on violence, the students were presented with the following incomplete sentence “Violence is (like) ….. because ……….” and then requested to complete it. Based on the descriptions, five categories were elicited; threat; purpose; destruction, psychological harm and (physical) harm; injury and death; force. It was seen that metaphors were mostly used in the category of threat, as opposed to the category of injury and death with the smallest number of metaphors. Recommendations were offered based on the results of the study.