The monograph is based on the results of the research conducted on the basis of the psycholinguistic concept and the concept of the specificity of individual knowledge. The problems of metaphor are considered from the perspective of the main scientific paradigms: philosophical, psychological, linguistic, psycholinguistic and cognitive. Considerable attention is paid to medical metaphor in political, medical and naive discourse. The issues of theory and results of empirical research discussed in the monograph are interesting for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for specialists interested in the problems of formation and specificity of the functioning of metaphor in the mental lexicon.