Metaphorical associative maps (MACs) are projective material for psychological work that allows you to explore emotional experience through associations, images and metaphors. In the structure of our psyche, we can distinguish a conscious and unconscious area. The unconscious stores all our experiences, memories and repressed experiences. Maps allow you to bypass the control of consciousness and find the most relevant material in the unconscious. It is important to understand these processes because It depends on them whether a person’s behavior will be constructive or destructive. A traumatic experience, in which many strong feelings remain, can be suppressed and reliably hidden by psychological defenses. However, being repressed from consciousness, it continues to covertly influence human behavior. That is why it is important to realize it and process it. It is difficult to get to the “forgotten” experience using classical conversational methods. In such a situation, MAC will help to move forward in finding the causes of the current problem. MACs work through two important processes: Projection (I see in the outside world what is in my inner world) Identification (“This is me; and this is about me”). Each image has multiple meanings. Thanks to the phenomenon of projection, a person sees in the picture exactly what worries him. Different people can interpret one image completely differently. A metaphor that appears on any image reflects the problem that worries a person at the present time. The task is to realize and analyze those feelings, associations and memories that appear in a person when looking at a picture. Questions for working with cards: What thoughts and emotions pop up in your mind when you look at the picture? How does your body respond, what do you feel in it? What is this metaphor about for you? MAC in counseling: they help start the process when it is difficult for a person to formulate a problem or find it difficult to talk about painful experiences. allow you to freely express anger, anger, contempt and other negative feelings by talking about the hero, and not about yourself; save time and effort in searching for the problem and its causes; rich material for building internal supports and searching for resources; the safest and gentlest method of psychological work; If you are interested in looking into your unconscious with the help of MAC, I will be glad to help you in this deep exploration of yourself at our consultation! Thank you for your attention© Anastasia Shvetsova.