ABSTRACT
This chapter offers examples of important psychological and perceptual interpretations of domestic spaces. For psychologist and philosopher Gaston Bachelard, the “oneiric” house (oneiric: of dreams) is a metaphor of the psyche, and memories of its spaces, colors, and odors help to structure the personality of the adult individual. Anthropological geographer Yi-Fu Tuan draws on theories of spatial perception to show that buildings are understood through movement, and by the various senses – touch, smell, vision, awareness of light and dark. For Tuan, these perceptions are made conscious by the experience of architecture itself. Architectural historian and critic Beatriz Colomina uses the ideas of Freud, Lacan, and recent film theory to analyze the role of lines of sight in buildings by Adolf Loos; she also discusses interior spaces as related to theatrical practices. Historian of vernacular architecture Sue Bridwell Beckham employs the ideas of sociologist Erving Goffman and anthopologist Victor Witter Turner about performance and ritual in order to analyze the American front porch as a performative space. Art historian Adina Loeb develops further the ideas of Beckham and Colomina in her oral history of a tiny Yorktown apartment of the 1940s and 1950s.
