A map where the holes in the head stay holes
- The Metaphor Map for Psychiatric Experiences is a two-page A4 brochure from the University of Southern Denmark. It was made by Anita Wohlmann, an associate professor of literature, psychiatrist Birgit Bundesen, founder of the Danish Center for Arts and Mental Health (CKMS), and Anna Rieder and Sebastian Nathan, poets with lived experience in psychiatry; Andreas Korsgaard Rasmussen designed it. The map prints no date: its PDF file dates from 25 February 2026 and the SDU page was last updated on 23 February 2026, while Wohlmann and Bundesen described the map in The Polyphony on 5 June 2026 and put its publication in spring 2026.
- Page one is a drawn landscape with quotes from people with lived experience in psychiatry, grouped under images such as Holes/Caves, Container, Wings, Yarn/Wool, Chest of drawers and Barbed wire. Page two covers why metaphors, what the map is and how to use it, who it is for, what is meant by psychiatric experiences, why a map, and who is behind it.
- The quotes were selected from interviews Bundesen conducted in REWRITALIZE, a research project that develops and evaluates creative writing groups in psychiatry. According to The Polyphony, the map is based on over 3,000 pages of interviews with the project's participants.
- The map is free to download in English and Danish; no licence is stated, and translating it or using the idea for other illness experiences is arranged with Wohlmann or Bundesen. It is meant for people with lived experience in psychiatry, clinicians and social workers, relatives and educators, and can be folded into a patient information flyer or hung as a poster.
Some time after the map came out in spring 2026, its authors learned of one person who took a printed copy to a consultation with their psychiatrist. They do not know why; they guess the paper worked "like a piece of evidence" that others go through the same.
A landscape with a column of quotes
The first page looks like an old engraved chart, with a volcano, sheep, a hummingbird, an anatomical eye and a chest of drawers, and a line of barbed wire cutting diagonally across it. On the right, quotes sit under headings in orange capitals. Under Blink of an eye: "To be diagnosed felt like having a heavy helmet be pulled over your head and over your eyes." Under Barbed wire: "Shame and barbed wire, it goes a bit hand in hand."
From interviews to a legend
Bundesen collected the quotes in interviews for REWRITALIZE, which The Polyphony describes as a 15-week recovery-oriented creative writing intervention in Copenhagen. The team first planned a catalogue. Re-reading over 3,000 pages of interviews, they kept meeting natural spaces and animals, and the catalogue turned into a landscape with a legend and pathways. The back page says the selection is not meant as better than other metaphors and hopes it will be used creatively, "maybe even playfully 'misused.'"
A seminar at SDU
In spring 2026 the map went into a compulsory Narrative Medicine course for first-year medical students at SDU. During a 2-hour session Anna Rieder asked students to pick one metaphor, take a role such as patient, doctor or family member, and tell a story about it. Some students noted that a metaphor can put blame on a patient or lock a changing experience into one fixed image.
Holes and yarn
"There are many holes in my head." Hearing this, a clinician starts translating at once: memory gaps, poor concentration, thought blocking, then the matching item on a scale. The yarn gets the same treatment: "I always have many thoughts at once, I can't catch them. My thoughts are like a ball of yarn." On a checklist that is racing thoughts, scored and closed. The map leaves both as they were said, and its authors warn against "automatically labeling them as symptoms". The same speaker says what helped: writing "was like grabbing one end and untangling them, because on paper there is only room for one thought at a time." A score keeps none of this.
So when a patient brings an image, ask about the image first and in its own terms: where the holes are, what falls through them, which end of the yarn can be pulled. Copy the sentence into the notes in quotation marks, beside whatever gets scored.
A patient who says there are many holes in their head has already described the experience, and the next question can be about the holes.
The map is a brochure for conversation and teaching, not a study or an assessment tool. The quotes are the authors' selection from REWRITALIZE interviews, and the back page says it does not present them as better than other metaphors. No licence is stated, so translation or adaptation goes through the authors.