When a Metaphor Becomes a Research Question

What happened after “When Physics Becomes a Language of the Soul”?

By Dr. Salvatore Grammatico

Last year, I wrote an article for this blog entitled When Physics Becomes a Language of the Soul. It was not an attempt to explain physics, nor to transform spiritual life into science. Rather, it was an invitation to use the four fundamental forces of the universe as symbolic metaphors for four essential movements of the human soul: grounding, connection, inner cohesion, and transformation.

The response from readers was both encouraging and thought-provoking. Many appreciated the possibility of speaking about meaning, faith, and psychology through a language that was accessible without being simplistic. Others asked thoughtful questions about the relationship between metaphor and scientific understanding.

Those conversations stayed with me.

Looking back now, I realize that the article marked not the end of a reflection, but the beginning of a new stage in my research.

As a psychologist and psychotherapist, my work has never started with theories. It has always started with people.

Over the years I have listened to individuals facing illness, grief, vocational uncertainty, relationship crises, and moments when life itself seemed to lose direction. Again and again I found myself asking the same question:

Why do some people remain deeply connected to meaning even in the most difficult circumstances, while others lose their inner compass under similar conditions?

Viktor Frankl devoted his life to this question. His answer—the Will to Meaning—has shaped my own professional journey for many years. Yet another observation gradually emerged from clinical practice.

Some people clearly knew what gave their lives purpose, yet struggled to open themselves to others. Their lives were coherent but often self-contained.

Others dedicated themselves generously to serving people, communities, or ideals while privately wrestling with doubt, emptiness, or uncertainty about the meaning of their own lives.

These experiences suggested something important.

Perhaps Meaning in Life and Self-Transcendence were deeply connected without being exactly the same psychological reality.

Clinical intuition, however, is only a beginning.

Psychology advances by asking whether intuitions can withstand empirical examination.

That conviction led me into many years of psychometric research. Together with colleagues, I worked on developing and validating psychological instruments capable of assessing both Meaning in Life and Self-Transcendence. More recently, in collaboration with Professor Giuseppe Crea at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, these studies evolved into a broader investigation of how these two dimensions interact.

The preliminary findings were fascinating.

Meaning in Life and Self-Transcendence proved to be strongly related, yet they did not completely overlap. People could score highly on one dimension without necessarily showing equally high levels on the other.

Rather than representing a single continuum, they appeared to function as two complementary dimensions of existential life.

This insight became the foundation of what we have called the Existential Circumplex—a conceptual map that explores different configurations of existential functioning through the interaction of these two dimensions.

The Existential Circumplex — a map of Meaning in Life and Self-Transcendence.

The model is intentionally modest in its ambitions.

It does not attempt to classify people or reduce the richness of human experience to categories. Instead, it offers a framework for asking better questions.

How do purpose and openness to others shape psychological well-being?

Can different existential configurations require different therapeutic approaches?

How might education help young people develop not only goals, but also the capacity to transcend themselves in relationships, responsibility, and service?

These remain open questions, inviting further research rather than final answers.

Looking back, I find it interesting that this scientific journey did not begin inside a statistics laboratory.

It began with a metaphor.

The symbolic language of the first article did not become scientific proof. Nor was it ever intended to.

Instead, it generated scientific curiosity.

The image of the four fundamental forces encouraged me to look more carefully at the hidden dynamics that seem to sustain human existence. Symbolic reflection did not replace empirical investigation; it inspired new empirical questions.

This distinction matters.

Science and symbolism belong to different domains. Science seeks explanations that can be tested, refined, and sometimes rejected. Symbolic language speaks to dimensions of human experience that cannot easily be captured by numbers alone.

Confusing these two approaches would weaken both.

Yet separating them completely would also impoverish our understanding of what it means to be human.

Throughout history, many scientific discoveries have begun with imaginative ways of seeing reality differently. Metaphors do not provide evidence, but they often help us formulate questions worth investigating.

For me, this has been one of the most unexpected lessons of the past year.

The symbolic reflections that eventually became The Theory of Everything Within and the empirical research that led to the Existential Circumplex are not competing projects.

They are complementary expressions of the same search.

One explores the human person through the language of psychology and psychometrics.

The other explores the same mystery through symbols, spirituality, and interdisciplinary dialogue—a dialogue that, for me, remains rooted in faith: the conviction that the order we find in the cosmos and the order we long for in the soul ultimately answer to the same Source.

Both arise from the same conviction: that human beings are more than symptoms, behaviours, or performance. We are creatures continually searching for meaning, continually invited beyond ourselves through love, responsibility, creativity, and hope—and, for those of us who pray, continually drawn by a Love that precedes and exceeds our own searching.

If there is one insight I would add to last year’s article, it is this:

Sometimes metaphors do more than help us understand life.

Sometimes they help us discover new questions about life.

And occasionally, if we are willing to test those questions with intellectual humility and scientific rigor, they become the beginning of genuine research—research that, far from replacing faith, can become another way of taking seriously what faith has always intuited about the human soul.

The journey continues.

Not from certainty to certainty, but from one meaningful question to the next.

The full study—“The Existential Circumplex: Meaning in Life and Self-Transcendence as Orthogonal Dimensions of Existential Functioning,” co-authored with Professor Giuseppe Crea—is published in Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences and freely available to read online.

Author bio

Dr. Salvatore Grammatico is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and collaborating lecturer at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, where his research focuses on Logotherapy, Meaning in Life, and Self-Transcendence. He is the author of The Theory of Everything Within, a symbolic journey connecting science, psyche, and spirituality, and co-author, with Professor Giuseppe Crea, of The Existential Circumplex, a peer-reviewed psychological model of meaning and self-transcendence. More at www.lateoriadeltuttointeriore.com.