Metaphorical associative cards are a set of pictures the size of a playing card or a postcard depicting people, their interactions, life situations, landscapes, animals, everyday objects, abstract paintings. Some sets of cards combine a picture with an inscription, others include separately cards with pictures and cards with words. The combination of words and pictures creates a game of meanings enriched by new facets when placed in one or another context, studying one or another topic that is relevant to a person at the present time.

This is a projective psychological technique: it is important not originally set by the researchers to sense, but the soulful response of each individual to the image that he got. In the same picture, different people will see completely different phenomena, in response to the stimulus will take out all their inner content of actual experiences.

How do metaphorical cards serve a mutual understanding between people? First of all, the cards help to build a bridge from person to person in cases where it is difficult for people to talk to each other on some acute topic. Metaphorical associative cards help express thoughts, formulate them, and concretize the message that needs to be transmitted. In addition to facilitating the verbal expression of emotions, the card, as an intermediary between the emotional worlds of two people, itself carries a certain emotional charge, and can be perceived as a message even without verbal accompaniment.

Metaphorical associative cards are an instrument of a professional psychologist, psychotherapist and coach, used in diagnostics, correction and development of abilities. It is a tool of the business trainer and leading psychological groups used to "warm up" the group, establish trust relations between the members of the group, to diagnose the actual needs of the group and as a method for group work.

At the same time, metaphorical associative cards are a game that you can safely and with pleasure play with your own and other people's children, parents, spouses, colleagues, friends, acquaintances and first comers - a game without rules, but with thousands of ways to play into it, and the opportunity to come up with one thousand and one!When using professional psychologists, psychotherapists, coaches, leading trainers in the work, metaphorical associative cards have the following advantages:

associative cards are international and can be used in all cultures, for all ages;

working with associative cards, we bypass the rational part of thinking;

metaphorical cards help us to realize a dialogue between the inner and outer, to bring out the deep material to the surface;

metaphorical cards - it is a springboard for our fantasy, launching bizarre associations, leading us to unexpected discoveries;

associative cards help remove the protective barriers of the psyche;

metaphorical cards create conditions for people to self-discovery and self-knowledge;

associative cards create a safe and comfortable environment for self-discovery in pairs or in groups, help "get out of their shells" and "break the ice" in an alarming environment;

metaphorical associative maps can be used as substitutes for Hellinger arrangements - when the therapist-client works one-on-one.