L’habitat et ses liens avec le psychisme : aspects psychopathologiques et cliniques de l’attachement à l’habitat

Abstract

IntroductionThe conscious or subconscious representations associated with habitat vary for each individual through the organization of properties of the Self. If the habitat reflects to some extent our internal world, the latter becomes intimate in this space only because the individual will have experiences in this home, experiences that shape the world in which the person lives. Personal achievements within family, at work, in society are all events which, at least temporally, may be associated with that spatial reference point which is the home. What happens then when the scaffolding on which a person was installed becomes unstable? It goes without saying that the balance of the individual wobbles if there is no risk of collapse. MethodIn order to develop our way of thinking, we followed a reflection based on the following questions: what does the habitat represent for the subject? What role does the habitat have in the memory of the subject and that of his/her entourage? To what extent is the habitat necessary for its realization about the world? ResultsSince birth, each individual builds a representation of space from the coordinates of his/her body and environment. The process of construction of the body image is in time to carry a representation of that more or less accomplished by individuals, according to the own body. However, the space of the home is a privileged space for both psychological projections and the penetration of the body. Thus, the individual, who carries his own intimacy, moves into a habitat to take possession of it. The above-mentioned dynamic psychological processes (projective mechanisms) correspond to some extent to the active process of appropriation of the habitat for which it is the project to engage the living space as the self-construction. The present action of the individual's appropriation takes part in a continuing historical process of the inherited data of the past and those considered in future projects. DiscussionBeing invested with various representations, the habitat contains a specific interior: an intimacy. Interior and intimate relate to an inside circumscribed within the limits of the habitat or the body. However, intimate, superlative of interior means “what is the most inside”. It is nourished by our identity, secrets, aspirations, regrets, or misfortunes, our strength or our fears, but it is also concerned by our family, professional, social, etc. bonding. These are the intimacy data of the individual that are materialized in home investment. Some authors do not hesitate to use eloquent metaphors about this symbolization of the Self. Bachelard proposes that of a vertical conception, where the poles of the cellar and the attic refer respectively to the subconscious and the conscious spaces. Goffman speaks of a narcissistic space equivalent to a “mental prosthesis”. There is also an extension of the idea of intimate toward interior of habitat for example when Djaoui talks about pseudopode of the inhabitant's self, and it is the same for objects owned, sometimes considered extensions of the person or family members. In that sense, the interior of the habitat is prone to a process of appropriation, a form of reification of the individual's intimacy. Within this familiar space, the subject can express him/herself in an authentic manner, allowing he/she to be him/herself, and to drop the masks imposed by society. The habitat allows the individual to re-find him/herself in an intimate environment, to promote the integration of more or less stressful outside world experiences. In contrast, we think that the habitat may be defective in this function, like the subject's intimate universe of links that bind him to different groups of belonging. ConclusionThe dynamic of the habitat's appropriation highlights the complex knots between the dimensions of the individual's internal world and those of the habitat. Regarding the outside world, like the individual who observes and listens to its subjectivity, the habitat as an extension of the intimate, and in view of the analogies with the skin ego, symbolizes an interface of the individual with the world. The individual builds a home, which becomes a base from which to draw a mesh of links with the world. The housing is to some extent, a reflection of the web of this meshing, but which also allows this web to be kept under tension so it does not fray. This singularity of attachment to the habitat seems important particularly with regard to trauma. Indeed, what about the traumatic experience of victims of natural disasters (floods, tornadoes, etc.), fire, burglary, etc.? It would be interesting to carry out work on this topic.