ABSTRACT
In the mid-1960s a major—one could say, majestic—cleavage occurred in the domain of the psychotherapies: with its full maturation and wide dissemination, family therapy came to occupy an equal but wholly opposed intellectual and clinical camp from the previously dominant and individually focused psychoanalytic psychotherapies. In psychotherapy a parallel dualism is represented, by psychoanalysis, which views the self as a mental structure ontogenetically unfolding and organizing itself through time and experience. This dualism, threaded through the long history of Western civilization, surely must also wind through the history of monuments: what they represent, how they are perceived and appreciated, why they are built, what inspires their creation. A “psychology” of monuments, of course, refers ultimately to the mental representations of the objects by the self and by a society of selves. Monuments, of course, are defined as things that remind: either by their mere survival and ensuing appreciation or as things intended to commemorate.
