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PFERD & REITER MEANS HORSE AND RIDER - THE METAPHOR

The human brain thinks in pictures!

Since time immemorial the picture of horse and rider is used as a pattern for parables and metaphors. Mostly, force and control struggle with each other herein. In other cases, however, both show an ideal interconnection and a perfect communication.

It is Platon who already uses the parable of horse and rider. For him, the horse is the symbolic embodiment of human affects. On the other hand, the rider represents the reasonable part leading and directing both. At the beginning of the 20th century, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud takes up this parable. He compares the horse to the undirected human force - the "it" - while the rider - the "I" - has to decide and to determine the horse where to go.

In Buddhist philosophy the ideal rider and his horse form a unity. This is why the rider can actually be "ideal". Only because both merged, the rider has a relation of authority to this part of reality.

Considering both interpretations, two action-guiding motives, two basic axioms of human behaviour towards oneself and others, become apparent in view of the horse's force:

Reason and control.
Integration and interconnection.

You will find these motives in nearly all organisations. They appear in individual and team coaching, and they arise in the internal and external communication of an enterprise.

With our work we generate a sensibility for these processes. Both a human and an enterprise are in need of reason and control as well as of integration and interconnection. However, in practice one of these motives often dominates. But if you provide for a well-balanced mix, it is more likely that your project becomes an economic as well as a social and communicative success.

Peter Bangert (Pferd & Reiter agency manager )

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