The Stain on the Rug: Commentary on Paper by Leanne Domash

Abstract

In this commentary, I accept Leanne Domash’s invitation to join her as she journeys through the Jewish Museum Berlin, the creation of its architect, Daniel Libeskind. She invites daydreaming as a means to explore the intersection of architecture and psychoanalysis. Thomas Ogden’s (2012) thesis about the creative possibilities for change in the reader and in the text accompanies me in my reading of her writing. I envision Domash and Libeskind as a psychoanalytic couple traversing the museum’s physical design embodying the horrors of the Holocaust. Freud’s paper on “The Magic Writing Pad” (1925) and the power of impressions on the mind and the use of hands leads me to the spilling of a cup of coffee in my office, the subsequent stain on the rug, and its impression on two different patients and their analyst. Finally, I speculate on the impact of two homes that Libeskind inhabited in his adolescence, the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx and Camp Hemshekh, and their presence in the design and experience of the museum.