At home in the world

To be at home in the world is an expression of attachment observed in all living beings and the specifically human need to create a world of shared meaningful experiences. Recent history has been a history of lost homes and lost nations. Although modern man and woman have gained new opportunities of finding a home with any person or community, an analysis of homesickness reveals the archetypal need for enduring attachments that are rooted in the actual history of our experiences of a whole world. The mythic notion of Sacred Space symbolizes an archetypal intention to invest kinship libido in people, animals and objects that are within the boundaries of a known world. Home becomes an inner psychological dimension not dependent on geographic location. We may understand it as a capacity of the psyche to offer a fixed point of reference to which we may return so that we may assimilate new experiences without loss of identity. The discoveries of infant research indicate that self-continuity manifests in infancy as an attribute of the core self. If this is not matched by a holding environment, psychologically painful experiences of felt abandonment can ensue. It is shown how this theme can appear as part of the analytic space, in dreams and in transference, and that a working through of its meanings individually can help restore our being at home in the world.