Freud for Architects

Author: John Abell
Year: 2021
Source type: book
Raw file: raw/books/abell_2020_freud_for_architects.md

Summary

Abell navigates Freud's key ideas for architecture, focusing on how the unconscious influences architectural creativity and aesthetic experience. The book explains Freud's developmental phases (oral, anal, phallic, genital) and how they shape adult architectural preferences, spatial intuition, and beliefs about proper design. Central is Freud's insight that "the psyche is extended" — human experience is influenced by projection of the internal psyche onto external objects. The book examines open form vs. closed form, formlessness, simulation, and spaces of social encounter through Freudian concepts. Abell argues for a "thick" (psychoanalytic) view of selfhood against the "thin" view of standard architectural history.

Key Claims

• Freud opened the door to the unconscious, where conventional architectural research has little traction
• "The psyche is extended" — human experience is always influenced by projection of the internal psyche outward onto relations with objects
• Freud's developmental phases in childhood influence adult architectural preferences, spatial intuitions, and design beliefs
• Open form vs. closed form in architecture correlates with different developmental phases (oral phase empathy for formlessness; anal phase empathy for closed form and control)
• Architectural design can be experienced as affirmation of unconscious wishes or as unwelcome reminder of them — relationships of "aeffects"
• Phenomenology lacks a psychical basis for understanding body experience from a psychoanalytic perspective
• Freud maintained that "an unbroken chain bridges the gap between the neuroses in all their manifestations and normality" — perversion "must form a part of what passes as the normal constitution"
• Architecture can be designed to support psychical well-being (e.g., Neutra's Reich-inspired residences)
• Social and technological histories of architecture overlook the human psyche — a "thin" vs. "thick" view of selfhood

Connections

Concepts: unconscious, psychoanalysis, aesthetic-experience, repression, trauma, simulation, developmental-phases, empathy, open-form, closed-form, formlessness, screen-memory, oceanic-feeling, phantasy, aeffects, oral-phase, anal-phase, phallic-phase, genital-phase

Authors: freud-sigmund, abell-john, eisenman-peter, koolhaas-rem, libeskind-daniel, kant-immanuel, heidegger-martin, merleau-ponty-maurice, bachelard-gaston, husserl-edmund, le-corbusier, giedion-sigfried, cousins-mark, neutra-richard, reich-wilhelm, rowe-colin, slutzky-robert, gropius-walter, semper-gottfried, vischer-robert, moholy-nagy-laszlo

Debates: phenomenology-vs-psychoanalysis, open-form-vs-closed-form, thick-vs-thin-selfhood

Related source notes: kidder-gadamer-for-architects, ,

Direct Quotes

"Freud opened the door to a place where conventional research in architecture has little traction, the unconscious." (p. 1)

"Space may be the projection of the extension of the psychical apparatus. No other derivation is probable. Instead of Kant's a priori determinants of our psychical apparatus. Psyche is extended..." (Freud, 1941: 300, quoted p. 4)

"...human experience is always influenced by the projection of the internal psyche outward onto relations with objects in the external world." (p. 5)

"Freud's thought concerns the universal core developments of childhood upon which the adult psyche is based." (p. 7)

"Architectural design can be experienced as a vaguely familiar affirmation of unconscious wishes, and on the other hand experienced as an unwelcome and, thus, ugly reminder of unconscious wishes." (p. 11)

"Freud maintained that 'an unbroken chain bridges the gap between the neuroses in all their manifestations and normality.' And what some might view as perversion 'is itself of no rarity but must form a part of what passes as the normal constitution'." (p. 10)

Open Questions

• How might psychoanalytic concepts be reliably applied to architectural design without falling into "wild analysis"?
• What is the neurological basis for Freud's theory of the unconscious in architectural experience?
• How do different developmental phases manifest in collective (not just individual) architectural preferences?
• Can architecture be designed to reduce internal stress before reaching harmful levels, as Neutra attempted?