130 In this paper doubts ae expressed about the traditional sur. vey techniques used in ascertaining the meaning of “house.” The peyehological theories of Cari Jung suggest another “pproach Fis mos signifoant contribution tothe understand Morte human psyche are he concepts ofcolectve.uncon- Sdous,the archetype and the symbol. These concepts are ‘discussed and the most basic of archetypes —selt—i ent- ied. The house reflects how man sees hinsel! Exemples from Contemporary architecture aro presented, and it i shown (hatin poetry, Merature, and dreams, houses are invested than numan gual ung's theones of dreams, thet i. is Sancoptof the unconscious, aroused tointerpet the symbolic ‘rearing of "house" In creams. The house 1s also s0en as Jeored, giving man a fixed point of reference fo structure the world about him. The location ofthe threshold is symbok Of how people relate tothe rest of society, the hearth 80 Pas special meaning. Ces have been built in te image, ther conscious 0” unconscious, that people have of the ‘wor INTRODUCTION My work ofthe last few years comprised sociological surveys of people's responses to the designs of their houses and communication of the resultant guidelines to architects. But | have experienced a nagging doubt that | was merely seratching the surface of the true meaningof “the house." There seemedto be something far deeper and more subliminal that | was not admitting, or that my surveys and investigations were not revealing. The exciting personal discovery of the work ‘of the psychologist Cari Jung has opened a door into another level of my own consciousness which has prompted me to consider the house from a wholly difer- tent viewpoint. This paper's a tentative intial exploration into the subject. ‘The reader must expect no startling, all-embrecing ‘conclusion; there is none. This is speculative think piece and is deliberately lett open-ended in the hope ‘that it wil motivate the reader, and the author, to think further and more deeply in this area. weertLtty Labinsor gp The House as Symbol of the Self* Clare Cooper University of California at Berkeley JUNG'S CONCEPTS OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS, THE ARCHETYPE, AND THE SYMBOL Three of the most significant contributions of Car! ‘Jung to the understanding of the human psyche are the concepts of the collective unconscious, the archetype, and the symbol. Sigmund Freud postulated an individual unconscious in which are deposited the suppressed and repressed memories of infancy and chikdhood. Theoretically, the psyche keeps these ‘memories in storage until they are reawakened into consciousness by the medium of the dream, or its we ing equivalent, free association, intially embracing Freud's theories, Jung became increasingly dissatisfied as his studies of persistent motifs in his patients’ dreams and fantasies, and in primitive mythology and folk tales, revealed what ‘seemed to be universal patterns which could not be “Copyright © 1974 by Clare Cooperaccounted for solely by the theory of an individual Unconscious. He began to postulate the theory of an inaividual unconscious plus a universal or collective Unconscious linking man to his primitive past, and in ‘which are deposited certain basic and timeless nodes of psyehie energy, which he termed archetypes Jolande Jacobi has termecithe archetype "a profound riddle surpassing our cational comprehension "It pre ccedes all conscious experience and therefore cannot bbe fully explained through conscious thought pro cesses. Pathaps one of the simplest analogies is that offeres by Jacobi of a kind of “psychic mesh” with nodal points within the unconscious. a structure which somehow has shaped and organized the myriad con tents of the psyche into potentia! images, emotions, ideas, and pattems of behavior The archetype can only provide a potential or possibly of representation ‘in the conscious mind, for as soon as we encounter it through oreams, fantasios, or rational thought, the archetype becomes clothed in images of the concrete World and is no longer an archetype: it's an archetypal image or symbol. As Jacobi has writen: Man's need 10 understand the world and his experience 10 ‘t symbotcally as wall as realstcaly may be noted early in the lives of many chloren The symoote imaginative view of the won is just as organic ® part of the chit’ We as the wew transmitted by the sone organs It represents & ‘natura’ ano spontaneous striving which adds to man’s Bi00g" (al Bond a parallel ane equivalent psychic Dand, thus enh lng hte by anatrer dimension-ano 1's ominendy tis dimen- ‘Sion that makes man what nes [115 te root of al creative aetway it we can think of the archetype as a node of psychic ‘energy within the unconscious, then the symbol is the ‘medium Dy which it becomes manifest in the here and now of space and time Thus a symbol. although it has objective visible realty, always has behind it a hio- den, profound, and oniy party ineligible meaning which represents its roots in the archetype ‘Although impossible for most of us 10 define or describe, we are al aware ofthe existence of something we call "sell" the inner heart of our being, our soul. ‘our uniqueness—however we want fo describe it tis in the nature of man that he constantly seeks a rational ‘explanation of the inexplicable, and so he struggles with the questions: What is self? Why here? Why now? The House as Symbo! of the Self In tying to comprehend this most basic of archetypes—selt—io give it concrete substance, man grasps at physical forms or symbols which are close and meaningful to him, and which are visiole and Gofinable The frst and most consciously selected form to represent saif is the body, for it appears to be both the outward manifestation, and the encloser, of seit Onaiess conscious level, believe, man aiso frequently selects the house, that basic protector of his internal ‘environment (beyond skin and clothing) to represent or symbolize what is tantalzingly unrepresentable ‘The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard hes sug gested that just as the house and the nonhouse are the basic divisions of geographic space, so the self land the nonsel represent the basic divisions of psychic space The house both encloses space (the nouse interior) and excludes space (everthing outside ‘Thus it has two very important and diferent compo: nents; te intrior and ils facade. Tas hovse therefore ricely retlects how man sees himsel, with Bolan intimate interor, of se 3s weed tam winia aoe iF To those inlaves wo are invited inside, ‘and a public exterior (the persona or mask in Jungian forms) othe sa that we choose to display to others * “Most of us have had the experience of moving from ‘one house to another, and of finding the new abode intially strange, unweicoming, perhaps even hostile But with time, we get used 10 the new house and its quirks, and it seems almost as though it gets used to us; we can relax when we return toi, put our feet up, become ourselves. Bul why in this particular box should we be ourselves more than in any otner? tt ‘seems as though the personal space bubble which we carry with us and whichis an almost tangible extension of our sell expands to embrace the house we have Gesignated 2s ours. As we become accustomed t0, ‘and lay claim to, tis litle niche inthe world, we project something of ourselves onto its physical fabric. The furniture we install, the way we arrange it, the pictures wehang, the plants we buy and tend, all are expressions of our image ot ourselves, all are messages about our: selves that we want to convey back to ourselves, and to the few intimatas that we invite into this, our house. ‘Thus, the house might be viewed as both an avowal cf the self—that is, the psychic messages are Towing 131192 Fundamental Processes of Environmental Behavior ‘rom self to the objective symbol of selt—and as a revelation of the nature of selt; that is, the messages are moving from objective symbol back to the self is almost as if the house-sel continuum could be thought of as both tie negative and postive of a film, simultaneously ‘THE HOUSE AS SYMBOL-OF-SELF: EXAMPLES FROM CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE ‘Man was @ symbol-making animal long before he Was a toolmaker: he reached high degrees of special- zation in song, dance, ritual, religion, and myth before he did in the material aspects of culture Desenbing the rich symbolism of the man-made environment in part of Africa, Amos Rapoport notes’ Among the Dogon and Bambara of Mak every obyect and social event nas a symbole as weil az 2 vitanan funcion Houses, household objects, and chair have al symboke ‘quaity, and the Dogon civiizaton, tnerwserelatvely poor, several thousand symbolic elements The farm plats and the whole landscape ofthe Dogon reiect ths cose ordor The vilages are bun pars f0 represent neaven and earth and elds are cleared in sprats because the world es bear ‘reated spirally. The vilages are lic out inthe way the parts Of the body lie with respect 10 each other, wile the house ‘ofthe Dogon, or paramount chit, is @ mode! othe universe sta'smaler seal ® Rapoport concludes significantly that “man’s achieve- ments have been due more to his need to utiize his internal resources than to his needs for contro! of the Physical environment or more food." It would seem that there is an inverse relationship between technological advances and the cuttwation of ‘symbol and ritual. For so-called civilzed man, the con- ‘cious recoghition of the symbolism of what we do, how we live, and the houses we lve in, has been all but lost. But if we start to delve beneath the surtace, the symbolism is still there |n a recent study of how contemporary California suburbanites chose their homes, Berkeley sociologist Carl Werthman concluded that many people bought houses to bolster their image of selt—both as an individual and as a person in a certain status position in society? In one large suburban development near Figure + Photo credit: Mitchel! Payne ‘San Francisco, for example, he noted that extroverted, seifsmade businessmen tended to choose somewhat ‘ostentatious, mock-colonial display homes, such as in Figure 1, while people inthe helping professions, whose ‘goals revolved around personal satisfaction rather than financial success, tended to opt for the quieter, inward: looking architect-designed styles conforming to current standards of "good design,” such as that in Figure 2. In the contemporary English-speaking world, a pre- ‘mium is put on originality, on having @ house that is unique and somewhat different from the others on the street, forthe innabitants who identity with these houses. are themselves struggiig to maintain some senso of Personal uniqueness in an increasingly conformist world On the other hand, one's house must not be too way-out, for that would label the inhabitant as nonconformist, and that, for many Americans, is a label to be avoided The house as symbol-f-self is deeply engrained in the American ethos (albeit unconsciously for many),Figure 2 Photo credit: Mitchell Payne and this may partly explain the inability of society to ‘come to grips with the housing problem—a problem which is quite within its technological and financial capabilites to solve and which it persistently delegates to a low level in the hierarchy of budgetary values. ‘America is the home of the self-made man, and ifthe house is seen (even unconsciously) as the symbol of self, then itis small wonder that there is a resistance to subsidized housing orto the State's providing houses for people. The frontier image of the man clearing the land and bullding a cabin for himself and his family is notfar behind us. To a culture inored with this image, the house-setf identity is particularly strong. in some barely conscious way, society has decided to penalize those who, through no fault of their own cannot pull, buy. or rent their own housing. They are not seli-made men. Numbers of studies in England, Australia, and the United States have indloated that when asked to describe their ideal house, people of all incomes and The House as Symbol of the Self backgrounds will tend to describe a free-standing, square, detached, single-family house and yard. For example, in a recent survey of 748 men and women in thirty-two metropolitan areas in the U.S.5 percent ‘said they preferred iving in a single-family house rather shan in an apanmmen whether the ‘attachment 1 this form is the form itsel, or the fact that it subsumes territorial rights over a small portion of the earth, or the fect that aparments can rarely be ‘owned. But we do know that almost universally the image of the high-rise building for tamily living is rejected. An apariment is rarely seen as home, for a house can only be seen as a free-standing house- on-the-ground. (One coule arque that people have been conditioned to want this through advertising, madel homes sales- manship, and the image of the good life portrayed on television To a certain extent this must be true, but these media are in turn only reflecting what seems to be a universal need for @ house form in which the 193134 Fundemental Processes of Environmental Behavior self and family unt can be seen as separate, unique private, and protected "fhe high-ge apartment building fs rejected by most [Amoricans as afamiy hone because | woud Suggest igies one 70 trntony on the ground, violates the teanele mage ot what 8 Rouse 1s SS percowes FReonsciously as a thveat to one's seltimage as @ Separate and unique personality The house form i titich people are being asked 10 lve isnot a symbol Shae aut the symbol ofa stereotyped. anonymous flingeabinet eclecton of selves, which people fear they are becoming Even thougn we may make apart thents larger, wih many of the appurtenances of & fouse, as well a= opportunites for modification and Sanerahi, it may sil be along time before the maiorty Gt lower and rridclesncome American families wl Sooopt this as 2 valid image of @ permanent home * ths too grata treat other seltamage is possible thet tne vandals infieted on hightse housing P- jects isn par on angry reaction of the Inhabitants to this blatant violation of seitimage The mobile hippie ouse-on-wheels is another instanee ef anew housing form greatly threatening people's mage of what a. nouse—or by implication smabtantsshould be. The van convertedto mooie nome and the wooden gable-ooted house bul inthe Daokot etruck ae becoming common sihisinaunver- Sy community such as Berkeley and drop-out staging Ggrounce, suchas San Francisco, tisiemliaato spect te that his house frm has been adopted By Hippes, only because of ts cheapness as living accom tmodation, but 2iso because Its mobility and form are Revers —concemed wih seif and with making manifest their ‘own uniqueness, convinced of the need for inward ‘exploration and for freedom to move and swing with whatever happens. Hippies view themselves as differ- tent from the average person, and so they have chosen to lve in saltgenerated house forms—convertee trucks, tee-nouses, geodesic domes, _ Indian teepees—which reflect and bolster that uniqueness Tt was perhaps to be expected that eventually the establishment would react. In February 1970, the city ‘of Berkeley passed an ordinance making It legal to live in a converted truck or van; the residents of these new houses mobilized and formed the Rolling Homes ‘Association, but it was too late to prevent the ordinance from being passed '? When others oo openly display the appurenance (clothes, hairstyles, houses) of @ new seitimage it is perceived as a threat to the values ‘and images of the majority community. The image of the self as @ house-on-wheels was too much for the ‘establishment to accent ‘Even the edge-of-town mobile home park occupied by the young retireds and the transient lower middle class is somenow looked down upon by the average ‘American home owner as violating the true image of home and neighbornoad. A person who lives in @ house that moves must somehow be as unstable 2s the struc- ture he inhabits. Very much the same view is neld by house owners in Matin County. California, about the houseboat dwellers in Sausalito. They are “ciferent, Bohemian,” "nonconformist," and their extraordinary choice of dweling reflects these values "The contrasting views which people of different socioeconomic ciasses in the U S. have of their houses Tellects again the house as a symbol-ot-selt in a self “ord relationship, The greater are people's feelings oi living in a dangerous and hostile world with constant threats to the self, the greater is the likelinood that they will regard thelr house as a shell, @ fortress into whieh to retreat. The sociologist Lee Rainwater has ‘Shown that this image of the self, and of the house, ie ue for jowsincome blacks (particular'y women) in the ghettoes and housing projects of this country" With increasing economic and psychic stabiity (and in some cases, these are linked), a person may no longer regard his house es a forress-o-be-cetended but as an aftracive, individual expression of selt- fand-family with picture windows so that neighbors can ‘admire the inside. Thus, for many in the middle-income bracket, the house is an expression of self, rather than 2 defender of selt The sel-and-environnment are seen ina state of mutual regard, instead of a state of combat The fact that the decoration of the house interior often symbolizes the inhabitants’ feelings about self is one that has iong been recognized It has even been suggested that the rise in popularity of the profession of interior decorating is in some way related to people's inability to make these decisions for themselves since they're not sure what their self realy is. The phenome- ‘non of people, particularly women, rearranging the fur-( ) \ je Figure 3 Photo credit: Mitchell Payne riture in their house at times of psychic turmoil or ‘changes-in-self is a further suggestion that the house is vary intimately entwined with the psyche ‘The pregnant woman—in a very special psychologi- cal and physiological state of change—is especially likely to identity with the house, both in creams and in realty: Sudden compulsive urges t© do thorough house cleaning Seem common among pregnant women They are, on the ‘ne level, practical attrnpts fo prepare for ne coming baby, but wien tne nouse 1s already amply coan and delivery is limpnding, there may be a second, more significant lve! ‘The women may be acting out her unconscious dentitcaton of te house mitn her own body She may feel that if she ‘leans out te house and puts everything in order, she Is ln-some way doing something about that other Iving space, the "house" of har unbarn child For er, tis an object rather than 2 word, which has taken on Secret meanings. = ‘An interesting contemporary development is the interior decoration of the urban commune. In a number (of examples in the Berkeley-Oakland area visited by the author, it was very noticeable that the bedrooms, Pe The House as Symbol of the Self the only private spaces of residents, were decorated in an attractive and highly personal way symbolic of the self whose space it was, as shown in Figure 3 The living rooms, the communal teritory of six or eight or more different personalities, however, were only sparsely decorated, as exemplified by tne one in Figure 4, since, presumably, the problem of getting agreement fon taste from a number of disparate and highly individual selves was too great to overcome. Interest ingly, the more normal family house may display an ‘opposite arrangement, with bedrooms functionally but tninterestinaly decorated, and the living room, where quests and relatives are entertained, containing the best fumiture, family mementos, art purchases, photos, {and so on, and representing the collective family seit ‘The only exception tothis pattern may be the teenager's room-—highly personalized as a refiection of his struggle to become an individual with @ personality -eparate from his parents. in a recently published study of living rooms, Edward Laumann and James House have found that 135Fundamental Processes of Environmental Behavior Figure 4 Photo eredit: Miten the presence or absence of certain objects are good if not perfect clues to status and attitudes. It is the living room rather than any other room in the house wich provides these clues because The hung room inthe area where “performances” for quests dre most ofen given, and hence the “soning” oft must be ppropnate to tne performance Thus we expect that more tan any other par of the home, the Iving room refects the Inahidua's coneeious and unconscious atempts fo express {social ientty For example, they looked at a random sample of 41 homes trom among 186 respondents (all of which ‘ware one-and-two-family home dwellers in Detroit) who had annual incomes over $15,000 and presumably had enough money to decorate any way they wanted. They found that those with a traditional decor—French or Early American furniture, wall mirrors, small potted plants andior artificial flowers, paintings of people or sill fes, clocks—tended to be the white Anglo-Saxon ‘establishment, occupying occupations and status post tions similar to their fathers. Those with a more modern decor, characterized by modern furnture, wood walls, abstract paintings, solid carpets, and abstract designed curtains, tended to be upwardly mobile, non Anglo- Saxon Catholics whose families had migrated to the United States from southern and eastern Europe after 1900. The nouveaux rohes have @ svong need 10 validate their ‘how found status, yet they are not acceptable socialy by the waditonal upper classes Since their associations do not Clearly vaidate their posibon, Mey turn to conspicuous con Sumpton The noweaux riches, ten, spurn the style of ne waditional upper class in favor of te newer fashions This serves 2 double purpose: to establish thor tasefuness and hence status, while symboleally showing thei disdain for the "snobby" tracivonals ‘The findings of this study of decorative styles o living rooms seem to tie in well withthe result of Werthman’s study of choices of house styles, for in both cases there appears to be a strong correlation between the style Selected and the seltimage of the consumer. The house facade and the interior design seem often to be selected 50 that they reflect how a person views himseif both as an individual psyche, and in relation to society and the outside world, and how he wishes to present his self to family and friends,“These are just a few examples of how the house-as- self linkage becomes manifestin individual and societal behavior and attitudes: no doubt the reader can adc many more instances from his personal experience: ‘The thesis is not @ new one: but it seems that the Jungian notions of the collective unconscious, the archetype and the symbol, may offer a useful concep- tual structure to tie these examples together. Since the house-selt symbolism seems to arise again and again, in many disparate settings, and since there appears to be litle conscious sharing of this phenomenon, it seems reasonable to suggest that t 's through the medium of the collective unconscious that people are in touch with an archaic and basically similar archetype (the self) and with a symbol for that ‘archetype that nas changed litle through space and time (the house). Perhaps we can comprehend the essence of the hause-soll analogy more easily by look- Ing at evidence from literature, poetry, and dreams —orms of expression that may get closer to true un- conscious meanings than sociological surveys or similar empirical investigations THE HOUSE-AS-SELF AS MANIFESTED IN LITERATURE, POETRY, AND DREAMS (One doesn't have to look farther than the very words that are sometimes used to describe houses—austere, welcoming, friendly—to see that we have somehow invested the house with human qualities. In a book describing his experiences while cleaning and repairing fa country cottage 10 live in, Walter Murray wrote: 'S0 | eft the contage, swept if not yet garnished, and as | Jooked pack ati met quet evening wrh tne sunset all agiow behind it seamed thet somehow twas changed. The wi Gowe wore clean, and the sou! of @ house 1oKed out of Itseyes, sweet cotages peep, 01d houses blink and welcome Now Copsfora, whch had st fist defied, gazed after me Of least as an acquaintance, and months later was even fondly. But never new a smile to wrinkle the Dard comers ofits eyes ‘Although one might perhaps sneer af its cute anthropomorphizing of the environment, itis passages such as this which reveal what may be profound and barely recognized connections with, and projections onto, that environment. Inher introspective autobiography, written in the form of adiary, Anais Nin saw quite clearly both the security ‘and sustenance that can ensue from living in @ house The House as Symbol of the Seit that reflects one’s own sel-image, and the phenome- ron of projecting onto the home one’s inner fears and anxieties: When (look atthe Jarge green iron gate from my window Intakes on ine ait of arson gato AN unjust feeing, since know lean leave the place whenever I want, and since anew that human beings piace upon an objec. oF a person this responsibilty of being te obstacle when the obstacle los aways witnn one's set in spite of hs knowledge, | often stand at the window staring atthe large closed iron gate, asi Roping to obvain inom tis contemplation a reflecton of my inner obstacies (alu openite Butthe ite gate, witht overnanang fy ike dsorderes har over @ running child's forehead, has 1 Sleepy ano shy ar. an a of being always nat open Tenose te nouse for many reasons ‘Bocause i seemed f0 have sprouted out of the earth the ‘2 trea, $0. deeply grooved ff was within the old garden It hago colar and the rooms rested nghton the ground Below the ug, | fol, was the earth 1 could take root here, 100i tone wih nouse and garden, take nourishment irom them Ike te pans °° In @ short passage from @ popular newsmagazine description of the German writer Gunter Grass, the image of his style of writing, his way of working, his Clothes, and the house he lives in—all reflect the inner ‘character, the self, ofthis man: Grass isa fanatic for moderation He is @ moderate ine way finer men are extremists Hols @ man almost crazy for sanity ‘Balance is Grase's game. He Is in love with the firm, the ingite. He has a peasant’ instinct for the sold ground, in atisan'sfoeing for materials His Wast Berlin nome-oe- Senibed by one vistor as "a god-awful Wileimian houso’is Sold as 8 for The furnture is reassunngly tnichlegged. The tors are bere. ‘There are no curtains. In lean, wrinkled, ‘esoluely undistinguished clotnes—open necked shits re the nle—Grase walks from room fo Yoom with workmanike purpose. He looke Ike @ visting plumber who nes 8 job to fo and knows quite well that ne can dot"? ‘The notion at house as symbol of mother or the womb is one fairly common in Iterature, and indeed has been the inspiration of a number of organic architects who have tried to re-create this safe, enclosed, encircing feeling ntheir designs. Inthe following fictional account, wwe see how the house takes on a symbolic matemal function in response to the fear of the man within and the storm outside: ‘The house was fighting gallant At frst t gave voice to is complaints, the most awiu! gusts were attacking # from ‘every side at once, with evident hatred and such hows of age that, tinos, trembled with fear Butt stood frm The ateady human being in whom I had sought sheer for iny body veled noting 10 te storm The house clung 10 137138 Fundamental Processes of Environmental Behavior ‘me, bke a she-woll and at tmes could smell ner odor pent ‘ating maternally to my very hear That night se was realy ‘ny motner She was all! had to keep and sustain me We were sione © Here, in the unusual circumstances of a storm, one can see how this human, protective symbolof the house right well be concelved. But what of ordinary citcum- stances? How does the house-as-self symbol first begin to take root? Undoubtedly, one must look for the roots ininfancy At first, the mother sits whole environment. Gradually, a5 the range of senses expands, tne baby begins to perceive the people and physical environment ‘around it The house becomes lis world, its very cosmos. From Being a shadowy shell glmpsed out of half-closed eyes, the house becomes familar, recog- rizable, a place of security and love The child's world then becomes divided into the house, that microspace within the greater world that he knows through personal discovery, and everything that lies beyond it. which is unknown and pemaps. frightening. In a sense, the child's experience reflects the assessment of known space as made by preiierate societies. As Mircea Eliade has written’ ne ofthe outstanding charactanstics of radkiona! societies Is me opposiion that Vey assume Setween their mpebited femtory andthe unknown and indeterminate space that su rounds i The former 1s world (mere precisely, our world), the cosmos; eventning outsige Is no longer a cosmos but {sort of other worla," foreign, chaode space, peopled Dy ‘ghosts, demons. Yoreigners. As the child matures, ne ventures into the house's outer space, the yard, the garden, then gradually into the eighborhood, the ety, the region, the world As space becomes known and experienced, it becomes @ part of his worid. But all the time, the house is home, the place of fst conscious thoughts, of security and roots. It is no longer an inert box; it has been experienced, has become a symbol for self, family, mother, security, ‘As Bacholard has written, "geometry is transcended.” In the following poem, waitten by a child of 12 years, the notion of the family house being @ special piace ‘of security and love to which the child anxiously returns. ater school, is feelingly evoked (© yoyous HOUSE When I walk home trom schoo, J'see many nouses Many houses down many stroots They are warm comionablo houses But otner peopie's houses ‘pass without much novice Than as J walk father, arher 1 see a house, the house ‘springs up with a jerk That speeds my pace. eh forward “Longing makes me napoy, T'ouboie sige ft my house ‘As we become more ourselves—more self actualized in Masiow’s terms—it seems that the house- as-symbol becomes even less tied to Its geometry A Writer quoted by Bachelard describes his house thus: My house is diaphanous Dut it 18 not of glass. it is more of the nature of vapor its walls contract and expand as | esire At times, | aw them close about me tke protective fimor Butat others, ot te walls of my house biossom fut nthe own space, which is minty extensible ‘The symbol has become flexible, expandable according to psychic needs. For most people, the house is not actualy changeable, except by such measures as ‘opening and closing drapes and rearranging furniture to suit our moods. For one French poet, these alternate ‘needs of expansion and contraction, extroversion and introspection, openness and withdrawal were made physical realities in the design of his dream home—a Breton fisherman's cottage around which he construc- ted a magnificent manor house Inthe boay of te winged manor, which dominates both town ‘andsea, manand the universe, he etaned.a cottage chysals In order 10 be aie fo hide alone In complete repose The wo extreme reaties of conage and manor take Inte aocoun our need for retreat and expansion, for simplicity ‘and magnificence Perhaps the suburban home buyers’ yen for both an ‘opulent facade with picture-window view and colonial porch and for @ private secluded den is a modern man- ifestation of this need. ‘A recent news story suggests, in somewhat starting fashion, what may be strong evidence for the signif ance of house or home to the psyche’ When both his parachutes faled i a recent jump trom a plane 3,300 feet above the Coolidge, Ariz arport sky diver ob Hall 19, plummeted earhward and hit the ground at ‘anestimated 60 m pn Miraculously, he survived few days later, recovering trom nothing more serious than @ smashed ‘088 and loosened teeth, ho fold reporters what the plungehad been ike“! screamed I knew | was dead and that iny ite was ended All my past ife Nashed Cefore my eyes, (realy ald saw my mother faco, all the homes Ive Ived in aes added], the miltary academy | attended, the faces of hens, everything "> ‘Surely, the fact that images of “all the homes I've lived in” flashed through the mind of @ man approaching ‘almost certain death, must indicate a significance of that element of the physical environment far beyond its concrete realty, Ife start to consider the messages from the uncon- scious made manifest through dreams, we have even more striking evidence of the house-as-self symbol Carl Jung in his autobiography describes quite vividly dream of himself as house, and his explorations within J was i @ rouse | aid not know, which had two storeys lrwas ‘my house found mysoin the upper storey, where there was a kind of Salon furnished with fine old pieces i rococo style On the walls hung a number of precious 015 aintings ? wondered that ts should Be my house, and Frought, "Not Ded" But then if cured to me that I oid ht now what. the ower for looked tke. Descencing the Sas reached the grounafloar There everyting was much older, and I realzed that ths part of the house must date from about the fiteenth or shteanth century. The furnishings wore medieval: the Roors were of red buck Everywhere it was rather dark. | went rom one room to another thinking, "Now I realy must explore the whole house.” came upon & heavy door and opened it Beyond i.) discovered a stone ‘aay that led down nfo the cela Descending again, | found myself n a beauty vauited room which looked ex- Ceedingly ancient Examining the walls | discovered layers Gtenck among the ordinary stone Blocks, and chips of Back in {he mortar As soon as | saw ths Anew that he walls Cate irom Roman times, My interest by now was intense. | 190K0d ‘more eiosely atte Noor If was 0? stone slabs, and in one Ghinese | eiscovered a ring. When | pulled tthe stone slab Iiteo and again saw a stairway ofnarrow stone steps leading ‘down into the depths. These, 00, | Sescended, and entered 2 low cave cut info the rock. Thick dust lay on the floor fand in the dust wera scattered bones and broken pottery. lke remains of 2 primitve cule. I discovered two human shuls, obviously very old and hot disintegrated Then 1 ‘awoke * ‘Jung's own interpretation of the dream was as follows: Itwas plain tome that ne nouse represented a kind of image of the payone—that is t0 say, of my then state of con- Solousness, with hitherto unconscious addons. Conscious: nese was represented by the salon It Nad an inhabited ‘timosphere in spite ofits antiquated style The ground fer stood forte fst level ofthe unconscious. The deeper went, the more alen and the darker the scene The House as Symbol of the Self became. In ine cave, | discovered remains of 2 primitive Culture, that's the word ofthe primitive man witan mysell—a world which ean searcoly be reached or iluminated by con- Solousness The primitive psyche of man borders on tne ile ofthe animal sou, ust as the caves of prenistonc times were ‘svaly nnabited by animals etore man laid ciaim ro vem = ‘Jung deseribes here the house with many levels seen as the symbol-o!-sef with its many levels of conscious- ress; the descent downward into lesser known realms of the unconscious is represented by the ground floor, cellar, and vault beneath it. A final descent leads to fa cave cut into bedrock, a part of the nouse rooted in the very earth itselt This seems very clearly to be ‘a symbol ofthe collective unconscious, part of the sel house and yet, too, part of the universal bedrock of humanity. ‘Jung, unlike Freud, also saw the dream as a possible prognosticator of the future; the unconscious not only holds individual and collective memories but also the seeds of future action. At one period of his life Jung was searching for some historical basis or precedent forthe ideas he was developing about the unconscious. He didn't know where to star the search. Af this point he started having a series of dreams which all dealt with the same theme: Beside my house stood another, that isto say, another wing ‘orannex, whichwas svangete me. Each time would wonder fn my dream why | cd not know this house, although i hac ‘apparent always bean there Finally came a dream in which Treached the other wing. | oiscovered there a wonderful Inorary. dating largely rom the sixteenth and seventoanth cen tunes. Large, fa flo volumes bound n pigskin stood along the walls Among them were @ number of books embellished ‘wih cooper engravings of @ sirange character, and usta tions containing curous symbols such as | had never seen before. At the time | i not know f0 what they refered, ‘only much later aid I eeognize them as aichemical symbols in the dream | was conscious only of the fascination exerted by them and by the entre Horary it was @ collection of ‘mounabuia and sixteenth century pons Tne unknown wing of tre house was 2 part of my per sonaty, an aspect of myself rsoresented something that belonged tome but of which | was not yet conscious. I and especialy the Horary, refered to alchemy of which | twas ignorant, but whion | was goon to study. Some fifteen Years later | had assombied a library very ke the one in the oream * ‘Thus here in another dream Jung sees an unexplored wing of the house as an unknown part of himself and ‘a symbol of an area of study with which he would become very absorbed in the future, and which per- 138140 Fundamental Processes of Environmental Behavior mitted him to expand his concepts of the transformation of the sot. From many house dreams | have collected, two will suffice here to further emphasize the point. Inthe first cone, the dreamer had, in realty, jus lost a close friend in an auto accident. She reports the dream thus: ‘was being led through a ruined house by ata, calm man, ‘fessed alin white. The house was alone In @ Ht 1s wal of rubble, the layout and doorways no longer viibio. The man guide fed me slowly through the house poring out hhow fused 10 be, where rooms ware connected, whe door ways load to the outsige word [My interpretation of this dream is that, the tal man is @ art of mo, maybe my masculine, song, calm side. and he's pointing out thet despite tho fact that my sef-Ae-house appear to be in ruins nght now, due to my shock and gio! at As death, inere 1s part of ma that calmly and clearly wil ‘know how 10 find my way through the chaos. It was 2 vary comforting dream at 3 time of groat sees in another dream, the dreamer was in reality under much pressure from students and colleagues in his ‘academic job. He described his dream thus: There was a house, @ large English stately home, open to the pubic fo look at and traipse through But on this 3), ‘twas temporary closed, and vistors wore alsappontedy reading the notces and turing away | was i the basement ofthe house, sorting through some ail paintings, t0 see i ‘here was anything there of valve With the aid of a therapist, skilled in the interpretation of dreams, he saw the following message within the dream: |neeato ‘close up shop, take a vacation om althe pressures {and human input 'm experiencing ght now, and have be {oso through some ideas in my unconscious (the basement ofthe house) fo see if any are of value m guiding my future Breeton Fletumning to Jung's autobiography, he describes how, later in his life, he made manifest in stone the ‘symbol which had at times stood for sein his creams He describes how he yeamed to put his knowledge ofthe contents of the unconscious into soli form, rather than just describe them in words. In the building of his house—the tower at Bolingen on Lake Zurick—ne was to make “a confession of faith in stone” At frst! id not plan a proper house, but merely @ kind i primtive one-story aweling twas to bea rund structure ‘ith a hearth in te contor and bunks along the wal. more (oF fess had in mind an Aircan hut where the Ie, nged ‘wih sfone, ourns in the middle, and the whote ite of the amily revowves around this contre Prntve huts concretise ‘an kdea of wholeness, @ familal wholeness in which al sons of domestic animals Ikewise partcipato. But | atered ine plan even during te frst stages of bung, for | fot i was oo primitive Ivoalzed woulg have to be aregular two-story house, not @ mere hur crouched on the ground. So in 192 the fet round rouse was Bull, and when H mas over I saw that had become 2 Suitable dweling tower The feeling of repese and renewa! that | had in this tower was intense from the start It opresentad or me the maternal earn Feeling that something more needed to be said, four years later Jung added another bulging with a tower- like annex. Again, after an interval of four years, he felt the need to add more and built onto the tower @ retiring room for meditation and seclusion where no one else could enter; it became his retreat for spiritual concentration. After another Interval of four years he felt the need for another area, open to nature and the ‘ky, and so added @ courtyard and an adjoining loogia. The resutant quantemity pleased him, no doubt because his own studies in mythology and symbolism had provided much evidence of the completeness and wholeness represented by the figure four Finally, after his wife's death, he felt an inner obligation to “become ‘what I myself am,” and recognized that the small central section of the house which crouched 0 low and hidden was myseit! could no longer hide myself behing the "matemal” and “spina” lowers. So in the same yesr, | added an upper storey to this section, which represents myself or my ego-persanaiy Earter, | would not have Deen able to do this, would have regarded i as presumptuous seltemphasis. Now # signed {an extension of consciousness achieved in old age. With thatthe builtin was complete * Jung had thus bul his house overtime as a represen- tation in stone of his own evolving anc maturing psyche; it was the place, he said, where “I am in the midst cof my tue fe, 1am most deeply mysell.” He describes how: ‘From the beginning | fet tho Tower asin some way a place ‘of maturatio-a matoral womb ora maternal figure in which could became what I was, whet I am and wil be. gave me a feeing as i! were boing reborn in stone. itis thus {2 concretisaion of the indviduation process Dung the bulaing work of course, | aver considered these mat- ters” Gnly atewards di! see how all he parts ited Together and that 8 meaningtl form had resulted” @ symbol of psychic wholeness ** In examining at some length Jung's own retiections fon the house as dream-symbol, and the building of his own house as a manifestation ofthe self, we are notjust examining one man's inner life: hopetuly, there is Something here of the inner symbolism of all men. ‘Jung, perhaps more than any other thinker or writer of this century, has fearlessly examined his own uncon- scious and delved nto a great range of disciplines which together aided him in his quest to build a theory of the ‘unconscious and the self We must return again to Jung's concept ofthe colle: tive unconscious. It should be possible if his notion ‘of an uneonscious stretching through space and time beyond the individual is correct to find comparable ind cations of the house-self linkage in places and times far removed from contemporary Western civilization Wf there is indeed an archetype self, then perhaps in other places and times, the house has become one (though not necessarily the only) symbol for that indefin- fable archetype in the physical world. For, as Jung has ‘confirmed with ample evidence, the older and more archaic the archetype, the more persistent and Unchanging the symbol. MAKING SPACE SACRED In the opening chapter of his book The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion entitled “Sacred ‘Space and Making the World Sacred,” the noted his- torian of religion, Mircea Eliade describes how for many prelterate societies, space was not homogenous: inhabited parts were seen es sacred while all other space around was a formless, foreign expanse. In set- ting a new terrtory, man was faced with both a horizon- tal expanse of unknown land, and a complete lack of vertical connections to other cosmic levels, such as the heavens and the underworld. In defining and consecrat Inga spotas sacred, beitshrine, atemple, aceremonial house, man gave himself a fixed point, a point of refer fence from which to structure the world about him. in doing so, he consciously emulated the gods who, many believed, created the world by starting at a fixed point or example, an €9g, oF the navel of a slain mon- ‘ster—then moving out to the surrounding territory. As Hebrew tradition retells it: "The Most Holy One created the world like an embryo. As the emorya grows from the navel, so God began to create the world by the navel and from there it spread out in all directions." Through finding a sacred space, generally with the aid The House as Symbol ofthe Self of signs or the revelations of animals, man began to transform the shapeless, homogeneous chaos of space into his worid (Once located, the sacred space had to be conse- crated, and this veryoften tookthe formofaconstruction which had at its center a pilar, pole, or tree. This was seen as a symbol for the cosmic axis and the means by which communication was made possible from one cosmic level to another. Whether seen as @ ladder, asin Jacob's dream, or asa sacred pill. as worshipped by the Celts and Germans before thelr conversion to ‘Christianity, the verical upright was an almost universal symbol for passage to the worlds of the gods above and below the earth Having created a sacred place in the homogeneity ‘of space, man erected a symbol for the cosmic axis and thus centered this place at the Center of the World But, Eliade maintains, there could be many Centers of the World, and indeed the Achilpa people of the ‘Arunta tribe of Australian aborigines always cartied the sacred pole with them so as not to be far from the Center or its link with other worlds. The religious man of fixed settiements, although he knew that his country ‘and vilage and temple all constituted the navel of the also wanted his Own house to be at the Canter and to be ‘anvimagomunai” (He) could ony ve na space open: Ing upward, where the break in plane was symbotealy fastured and hence communication wih the “other world, the transcendental world, was Nualy possible. Of Course the sanctuary-ine Center par excellence —was ther, close fo him but he feht the need to lve at the Center aways. Thus it was that the house, like the temple and the city, became a symbol of the universe with man, ike God, at its center and in charge of its creation. The house, lke the temple or shrine, was sanctified by ritual ‘Just as the entrance to the temple was, and sti is, regarded as the dividing line between the sacred land the profane worlas and is sultably embelished to ward off evil spirits which might attempt to enter the inner sanctum, so the threshold of the house is regarded fs one of the most important dividing lines between ‘nner private space and the other public world. Even ‘few living in the Western World would admit today to a belief in household spirits, there are still parts of 141142 Fundamental Processes of Environmental Behavior the world where there are strong beliefs about how the house should be entered (right foot first among country dwellers in Finland, Syria, Egypt, and Yorkshire), and the custom of carrying the bride over the threshold is widespread throughout the worid and has been recorded since ancient Roman times. Among contemporary city dwellers, the sanctity ofthe threshold is stll revered by such behavior as removing one's, hat and wiping one's shoes before entering the dwelling, or in Arab houses, by removing one’s shoes. In China, the orientation of the door toward the south, and in Madagascar toward the west, are examples of the Importance of a felicitous orientation of the door to the cosmos # Among orthodox Jews, the Commandments are attached to the doorpost of the house, for they have been ordered: “Thou shalt wite them on the posts by thy house and on thy gates” (Deuteronomy VI: 9). in northern England working class districts, the daily routine of polishing the front door knob and whitening the doorstep is a further contemporary example of special, almost rtvalistic, attention paid to the threshold. ‘The location of the threshold varies in different cut tures, and it may well be that this location vis-é-vis the outside world is symbolic of how the people as individuals relate tothe rest of society. n the American house, the front yard is generally unfenced and part of the streetscape, and may be viewed as semipublic teritory; the real threshold to the house is the front oor itself This may reflect an American interpersonal trait of openness to strangers and of (initial at least) friendliness to people they hardly know. In England, however, the fenced front garden witn a gate puts the initial threshols at some distance trom the house iset, ‘and is probably symbolic of the greater English reserve at inviting strangers into their houses and at opening up to people before they know them very well. The ‘compound of a Moslem house puts the threshold even ‘more forcibly and deliberately at some distance from the house, and reflects the extreme privacy required by individuals, particularly women, from strangers and ‘eighoors, ‘Traditionally one ofthe principal tasks of the woman of the house was to keep the hearth fire perpetually uring. Lord Raglan in his study of the origins of the hhouse® suggests that the hearth was originally con- ceived as a microcosm of the sun. Cooking took place outside, or ina separate building, and the sacred hearth was seen as a parallel to the sacred flame in the temple, ot something to be cooked on, but a symbol of the sun which must never be allowed to go ut for fear the sun itsetf would go out * Itis probable that fire existed before man built his first dwellings. Pere Detfontaines has suggested that the house originated as a shelter for this sacred fire that must not be allowed to go out >” Among the ancient Greeks the sacred fire was first enclosed in a special precinct, which later was surrounded by the living quar- ters ofthe family. The dwelling thus came into existence to protect the fire, and the Greeks maintain it was the sacred hearth that inspired man to build the house In the houses of northern China, the kang, a large central hearth of brick and earth, is thought of and referredto as "the mother of the dwelling.” Detfontaines reporis that until recently in houses in rural Sardinia, the hearth fire was kept perpetually alight and only extinguished when someone died, for the period of ‘mourning. The belief that the house had is traditional beginning in the protection of fire is stil maintained in Madagascar, where fire must be the frst item brought into a newly completed dwelling ** ‘The hearth was, until very recently, stil the focus of family life in England, where wives left behind by their Soidier husbands in World War | were enjoinedto "keep the home fires buming.” Although central heating is ‘becoming more and more common in England, and antipolltion laws prevent the buming of coal in open fires in most paris of the country, many families have replaced the perpetual hearth with an electric heater displaying arificial smouldering “logs " It isnot easy, after many centuries of veneration of the hearth, 10 replace it overnight with concealed hot air vents and to feel that something of the home has not been lost. {An interesting parallel reported in the San Francisco Chronicle in May 1971 told of the demolition of a soup kitchen in the Mission District where the only item to be saved for incorporation in anew old men’s hospital was the much loved symbolic hearth The ritual of Keeping the hearth alight because it represents the sun can be termed a cosmic ritual. Such rituals are based upon the belief that one can affect the macrocosm by acting upon a microcosm. There are many indications that temples of various faiths havebeen built as symbols of the universe, with the dome or high vaulted roof as symbolic of the heavens, and the floor symbolic of earth below Raglan reports "in the rituals of the Pawnees the earth lodge is made typical of man’s abode on earth; the flor is the plain, the wall the distant horizon, the dome the arching sky, the central opening, the zenith, dweling lace of Tawa, the invisiole power which gives life to all created beings "2° ‘Since one of the most widespread primtive beliefs ‘about the creation of the world was that it originated from an egg, so many ofthe fist cosmic manifestations intemples and houses were roundor sphericalin shape Lord Raglan has suggested that an original beet in the world as circular began to be replaced by a beliel in the world as square, and starting in Mesopotamia ‘and Egypt, and spreading later to China, Incia, Rome, North America, and Arica, the temple and the house 288 cosmic manifestations began to be buiton a square oF rectangular pian, instead of a circular one *° People as far apart as the Eskimos, Egyptians, Moris, and tribes of the North Cameroons believed that tne sky ‘or heavens were held by four comer posts which had to be: protected from decay or damage, and whose Quardian deties had to be placated by ntual The ‘weathercock on the root, which is believed in parts of England to crow to wind spirits in the four quarters and ‘ward them off, is one of the few contemporary western ‘manifestations of the ancient cosmic significance of the square and the four cardinal points. In most parts of the world, the rectangular house redominates today, but the circular shape has often een retained in the form of the dome for religious Or important secular buildings (for example, city hall, the state capitol, the opera house), recalling much eariier times when the circle had specific cosmic sig- nificance To summarize Raglan’s thesis, he suggests that house forms were derives from the forms of temples (the houses of the gods), and symbolize man's early bbalofs concerning the form and shape of the universe Drawing conclusions from his studies of myth and folk- lore, rather than buildings, Eliade comes to similar conclusions. By assuming the responsiiliy of creating the world thet he ‘has chosen to inhabit. he not only casmcizes chaos but alse The House as Symbol of the Self senctes his ite cosmos by making I tke the world of the gods That is why sotting somewnere—uiing @ Wi lage or merely @ house—represoms 2 enous decision, for the very existence ofmanis nvoWved: he must, in shor create ‘is own world and assume the responsicily of manag and renewing i tabnatons are not lghty changed, or f Js not easy {0 abandon ones world The house 1s not aft ‘object, a "machine to Ive in It '8 a unverse tat Iman con. Stuets for himself by imtatng the paradigmatic croatian of the gous, tne cesmagony ‘THE SELF-HOUSE/SELF-UNIVERSE ANALOGY It seems that consciously or unconsciously, then, many men in many parts of the world have built their cities, tomples, and houses as images of the universe My contention is that somewhere, through the collective Unconscious, man is sti in touch with this symbolism, Our house is seen, however unconsciously, as the center of our universe and symbolic of the universe But how does this connect with my earlier arguments regarding the house-as-symbol-f-self? Primitive man ‘sees his dweling as symbolic ofthe universe, with him- self, ike God, at its center Modern man apparently ‘es his dwelling as symbolic of the self, but has lost touch with this archaic connection between house setf-universe. The phenomenon of dreaming or imagining the self {5 a house—that package outside our own skin which fencioses us and in which we feel most secure—is Perhaps the frst glimmering of the unconscious that the “t" and the “non-t” are indeed one and the same ‘As Alan Watts has so eloquently whiten in the The ook; On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You are, #2 the notion that each individual egois separate (in space) ‘and finite (in time) and is something different from the Universe around him is one of the grand hoaxes of ‘Western thought. Although virtually impossibie for most of us nonmystics to grasp in more than a supericial ‘Way, this knowledge of our ndvisibilt from the environ: ‘ent is buried deep within the collective unconscious. ‘and becomes manifest symbolically (often without our ecognizing it) in fantasies, flashes of intuition, dreams, Poems, paintings, and Ierature The so-called mentally il may n fact be more closely Jn touch with these lost connections between self and 143144 Fundamental Processes of Environmental Behavior ‘environment than any of us realize. Alter along career working with schizophrenics, Harold Searles noted: It seems to me that, in our euture, @ canscious ignoring of te psychological importance ofthe nonhuman environment exis simultaneously with a (largely unconscious) over ‘dependence upon that environment J Bekave iat the actual importance of that envianment to the mcluidual is $0 great that he dare not recognize it Unconscously iis felt beleve, to bo not only an intensely porn conglomeration of thngs outside the sel, but also a large and integral part ofthe se The concreteness of the child's tunking suggests for him, 45 for the member of tho so-called primtve cuture and or the schizophrenic adult, the weath of nonhuman objects about him are constituents of he psychologic being in @ ‘more intimate sense than they are for he adult in cur euture, the adult whose ego is, as Hartman and Wamer empnesize, ‘wlaively clearly aiferenvaten rom the surtounding world, and whose davolooment of the capacty for abstract thinking helps tree hie from his anginal oneness wih the non ‘man world = Perhaps itis the so-called normal adult who, having been socialized to regard self and environment 2s Separate and totally different, is most out of touch with the essential reality of oneness with the environment, which small children, schizophrenics, preiterate people, and adherents of cenain Eastern religons Understand completely. There are certain religions, for example Buddhism, that regard the apparent separa- tion of the individual and the universe as a delusion My contention is that in thinking, dreaming, or fantasy- ing about self and house as somenow being inextricably intertwined, as being at some level one and the same thing, man may be taking the first step on the path towards what Zen adherenis would term enlightenment He is ridding himsetf of the delusion of the separation (of man from his environment CONCLUSION It there is some validity tothe notion of house-as-setf, it goes part of the way to explain why for most people their house is so sacred and why they so strongly resist, ‘a change in the basic form which they and their fathers, ‘and their fathers’ fathers have lived in sinee the dawn of time. Jung recognized that the more archaic and universal the archetype made manifest in the symbol, the more universal and unchanging the symbol itseit ‘Since self must be an archetype as universal and almost, 4 archaic as man himself this may explain the univer salty ofits symbolic form, the house, and the extreme resistance of most people to any change in its basic form, For most people the self is a fragile and vulnerable entity; we wish therefore to envelop ourselves in a symbolfor-self which is familar, solid, inviolate, unchanging. Small wonder, then, that in Anglo-Saxon, law itis permissible, it necessary, to kill anyone who. breaks and enters your house. A violation of the self (house) is pemaps one of man's most deep-seated ‘and universal fears. Similarly, the thought of living in ‘round house or a houseboat or a mobile home is, to most people, as threatening as is the suggestion that they might change their basic sell-concept. A con- ventional house and a rigidly static concept of self ara mutually supporting. Perhaps with the coming of age of Reich's Consciousness ili generation, and the social movements (civil rights, women's liberation, human, potential movement, etc) which are causing many to Question the inviolate nature of old selt-concepts, we can expect an increased openness to new housing forms and ving arrangements, the beginnings of whica are aleady apparent in the proliferation of communes: and drop-out communities This long statement on house-as-symbol-ot-the-self brings me back to my original problem: now to advise architects on the design of houses for clients who are ‘often oor, whom they will never know, let alone delve. imo their psychic lives or concepts of self | have no pat answer, but i there is some validity to the concept of house-as-selt, we must learn ways—through group encounters, resident-mestings, participant opservation, interviews—ot empathizing with the users’ concepts of self, and we must devise means of complementing ‘and enhancing that image through dwelling design. If in new housing forms we violate this image, we may have produced an objective realty which pleases the Politicians and designers, but at the same time pro- duced 2 symbolic reality which leaves the resigents bewildered and resentiul Certainly, one area that every architect involved with house design can and should investigate is his or her own biases based on images of self Bechelard, in his, very thought provoking siudy The Postics of Space, suggests somewhat fanciuly, that along with psychoanalysis, every patient should be assisted in making a topoanaiysis, or an analysis of the spaces‘and places which have been settings for his past emo- tional development. I would go further and say this exercise should be required of every designer He or she should begin to understand how present seit images are being unconsciously concretized in design, ‘and how scenes of earlier development (particularly childhood between the ages of about § and 12) are often unconsciously reproduced in designs in an effort, presumably, to recall that eatliar often happier phase of te In the past fow years, as a teacher in the College of Environmental Design at Berkeley, | have had stu- ents draw, in as much detall as they can remember, their childhood environments. After an interval of afew weeks, they nave then drawn what for each of them would be an ideal environment. The similarities are ‘often striking, as also are the similarities they begin to observe between these two drawings, and what they produce in the design studio. The purpose of the exer: cise is not to say that there is anything wrong with ‘such influences from the past, but just to point out that they are there, and it may well be to his advantag aS a designer to recognize the biases they ma introduce into his work. Inthe field of man’s relationship with his environment, the type of approach which might 6¢ termed intutive speculation seems to have been lost in a world devoted to the supposedly more scientific approach of objective analysis. As Alan Watts has speculated, this emphasis ‘on the so-called objective may indeed be a sickness ‘of Western man. for it enabies him to retain his belief in the separateness of the ego from all that surrounds it. Although certain objective facts have been presented in this paper, itis hoped by the author that its overall ‘message is ciear: alow yourself to be open to the con: sideration of relationships other than those that can be proved or disproved by scientific method, fort may well be in these thata deeper truth lies. Perhaps no one has stated it more eloquently than Watts, and itis with ‘quotation from his Nature, Man and Woman that | wil end this paper The laws and nypotneses of science are not so much cs covenes as nsiraments, ie knives anc hammers for bending nature o ane s wil So there 1s @ type of personality which proaches the world with an entra armory of sharp and hard instruments” by means ef which it shces and sons he universe into precise and sterle categories which wil not Imtatore with One's peace of mina The House as Symbol of the Self ‘hare is @ place in ife for 2 sharp knife, but here s a stil more important place for other kinds of contact with ne world Man is-not to Be an intellectual porcupine, meeting his environment with a surtace of spikes. Man meets tne world outside witn 8 sof skin, with @ delicate eyeball and fearcrum and finds communion wih through a warm mating. vaguely defined, and caressing touch whereby the world |sotsetata cstance ike an enemy'o.e shct, but embraced ‘m become one flesh, Ke @ beloved wile Hence the Importance of opinion, of insrumonts ofthe mind, which are vague, misty, and meling rather than clear-cut. They provide ‘possitiltes of communicaton, of actual contact and relaon- Ships with nature more indmste than anything to be found by preserving at all costs the “cstance of object” As Chinese and’ Japanese painters have so well understood there are landseapes which are best viewed through ne hosed eyes, mountans which are most aluing when partaly Veiled in mist and waters which are most profound when the nonzon is lst, ana they are merged with the sky © NOTES AND REFERENCES 1 Jolande Jacobi, Complex, Archetype, Symbol in the Peyenology of GG lung, New York: Pantheon Bock, 1957, 2 Ibid. 47 3 Gasion Bachelard, The Poste of Space, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969 44 Fortne purposes o this paper, we wil accept the Jungian view of “seit which he savas Both the core of ie Unconscious and the totaly of the conscious and te ‘unconscious. To slustate with a diagram: Conscious { Unconsious { set 5. Amos Rapoport. House Form and Culture, Englewood Cif, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1269, 50 bia. 43 Cat! Werthman, “The social meaning of the physics enwronment,” PhO. sissertation in socology, Univesity of California, Berkeley, 1958 8 Wiliam ‘Michelson, “Most people dont want what architects wan," Transaction, Vol 5 (July-August 1968), 37-43 The urban rich accept apartments because they generally have a house somewhere else; the eldery seem fo adapt well to apariments because they offer privacy with the 145146 Fundamental Processes of Environmental Behavior Possibity of many nearby neighbors, minimum upkeep Broblems, secury, communal faite, ele and for ‘mobile young singles or chidiess couples the imteg spa. talandtemporalcomnitmentof an aparimentisgeneraly te idea ving environment 10. A similar ordinance was passed in San Francisco in Maren 197% 11. Lee Rainwater, "Fear and house-as-haven in the lower lass" Journal of the Amencan instute of Planners. Vol 92 (January 1986), 23-31, and Behind Ghetto Wols, Chicago: Aline-Atherton, 1970. 12 Arthur Colman and Libby Colman, Pregnancy The Poychological Experionce, New York: Herder ang Herder, 1971 13. Edward Laumann and James House, “Living room styles and social atnbutes: patterning of material atfacis {an urban community,” in Laumann, Siegel, and Hodges, 198, The Loge of Social Hierarchies, Chicago: Marka 1972, 189-20 14 teig 15. Waller JC Murray,Copsford, London: Allan and Unwin, 1950, 34 16 Nin, Anais, The Diary of Anais Nin, 1991-34, New York: Harcour. 1968, 17 "The dontists chair as an allegory of it,” Time (Apri 13, 1970), 70 18 Henri Bosco, Macro, as quoted in G. Bacheiard, Te Poenos of Space, New York: The Orion Press, 1964, 4s 19. Mircea Eade, ho Scared and the Profane. The Nature of Religion, New York: Harcour, 1958 20. Richard Janzen, from Canada, in Miracles: Pooms by Chittren of te Engish-Speaking Wore, colected by Fichard Lewis, Now York: Simon and Schuster, 1986 © 1966 by Fichard Lewis. Repanted by permission of Simon and Schuster 21. George Spyridakl Mor Lucise, as quoted in Bachelar, aR op. cit, $1 Bachelard. op. cit, 65, “The pleasure of dying," Time (December 4, 1972), aaas! Carl Jung, Memones, Dreams and Reflections, London Colins, The Fontana Library Seres, 1969, 182-183, Ib, 198 oid, 228, ‘ova, 250, ‘ova 252 Ibias, 253, lade, op ct ova, 4 Tid, 43 Pierre Dettontaines, “The place of believing,” extracted ‘tom “Géogrephie et religions,” in Landscape, Vol 2 (Spring 1953), 26, Rapoport. op ‘cit, 80 ord Raglan, The Temple and the House, London: Rout ledge & Kegan Pau, 1964 In. most pats ofthe werd, cooking was one ofa number of actives (otners includes ehidoith and deals) which {ould not take place within the house Detfontaines, op ot. 26. ove agian. op cit, 138 ‘oie, 188, Elade, op. ct, 56-87 Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Krowing Who You Are, New York: Macmilan, Coli Books, 1966, 43 Harold Seats, The Nonhuman Envronmentin Normal Development and in Schizopnenia, New York: Interns ‘ional Universities Press, 1960, 295 ova, 42 Alan W Watts, Nature, Man and Woman, New York Random House, Vintage Books, 1970, 80-81