The Psychology of Home: A Mirror of the Self

Hermeticism, alchemy, and analytical psychology view the home as a powerful, universal, archetypal symbol of the human psyche – the inner world of man, its structure, consciousness, and the unconscious. The home is not merely a physical space, but a mirror reflecting our internal configuration, our level of development and personality integration, as well as our (usually undiscovered) essence. Following a 9-year journey of restoring and building a small family villa near Sofia – which, along with myself, underwent various ideas, transformations, experiences, construction crews, and visitors – I decided to share what this accumulated empirical material reveals as valuable universal reference points for self-analysis.

Aesthetics, beauty, and harmony in every location I have lived in, restored, or visited — whether in Bulgaria or around the world, have always accompanied my vision of what a space can look like, what it reveals about its inhabitants, as well as the resources people possess and how they can utilize them. Let’s now examine what the science of the human being reveals in its trinity — Spirit, soul, and body — where the body serves as one’s external home, which is also an analogy for one’s manifested (projected) physical home.

Hermeticism: As above, so below (Cosmic Correspondence)

The fundamental law of Hermeticism (“As it is in Heaven, so it is on Earth”) also operates along the “within — without” axis. A person’s external home is a microcosm, a miniature replica of their macrocosm (the inner spirit). Space is a living spirit, therefore Hermeticism views the space we inhabit not as dead matter, but as a projection of the mind (Nous). The way we organize our home is a direct material manifestation of our spiritual order or chaos.

When I began the restoration of the House (today Magnum Opus) 9 years ago, I believed I was building a modern shared workspace for digital nomads (coworking & coliving). However, the experiences and occurrences within it forced me to undergo a heavy personal process and a confrontation with the collective shadow – from battles with local corruption and building stone fences against parasitic energies, to a complete purification of illusions. No matter how much I did everything “by the book” – structure, organization, legal forms, and business models – the house seemed to refuse to be “just a business,” even one with a vision masterplan for contemporary rural development. Over the years, I realized that it was my personal temenos (sacred space), in which my individual descent into the roots of my lineage, birthplace, homeland (personal and collective unconscious) had begun.

Alchemy: The House as Vas Hermeticum

The Alchemical Laboratory: For alchemists, the home (the laboratory) is a sacred, enclosed space (the hermetic vessel) within which the Great Work (Magnum Opus) takes place.

The Vessel of Transformation: The house symbolizes the Vas Hermeticum – the sealed vessel in which matter (a symbol of our inner processes) decomposes, is purified, and is reborn. The very process of building, renovating, or cleaning the home corresponds to alchemical stages such as Nigredo (putrefaction / working with the shadows in the basement) and Albedo (whitening / purification of the upper floors).

The way we renovate our space reflects the evolution of our mind and essence as a whole. Do you know people who are perpetually starting renovations, throwing themselves into grandiose plans, only for everything to sink into chaos, debt, and eternal incompleteness? I have met such people, and typically, the mess, chaos, mold, and stagnation are always the expression of a psychic decay that no cosmetic changes can hide. Especially when the person or people have grown accustomed to living “cozily” in their own swamp. When a person lacks internal structure, their home remains in a constant, destructive Nigredo.

The other polarity exists as well, which I have encountered more frequently — beautiful buildings and courtyards, painted as if by an artist, brought to life by the talented hands of a craftsman and the beautiful aesthetic vision of a person, landing like a little piece of paradise on earth. Alas, behind the doors of such a “paradise,” I have often discovered its exact opposite — the shadows of hell. Today, many people have built their palaces, yet inside, their inhabitants live like ghostly prisoners. Even though they dine with silver-plated and gold-plated utensils, they consume the foul stench of devastating misery, gnashing its teeth against empty plates that visibly appear overflowing with delicacies.

Analytical Psychology: The Home as a Topography of the Psyche and Consciousness

Analytical psychology views the house as a vertical model of the human psyche. Our home is a Mirror of our Self: the upper and inhabited floors (living room, kitchen) represent the everyday Ego and consciousness. Hidden spaces (attics, closets, and especially basements) symbolize the personal and collective unconscious, where we hide our complexes, repressed memories, and archetypes. Clare Cooper Marcus is an architect and environmental psychologist, author of the brilliant book House as a Mirror of Self. She explores in detail how the terrace, furniture, clutter, or minimalism reflect the unconscious emotional voids, traumas, or blockages of the inhabitants.

Gaston Bachelard is a French philosopher, author of the phenomenological work The Poetics of Space. He explores the psychology of the house, paying special attention to the basement (the zone of irrational fears and the unconscious) and the attic (the zone of clear thought and rationality).

Marie-Louise von Franz writes extensively about the symbolism of houses and castles in fairy tales and myths, viewing them as structures of the ego or of the collective psyche. James Hillman is the founder of archetypal psychology, who also writes about the “psychology of architecture” and argues that the buildings we inhabit literally shape and therapize (or sicken) our souls.

Hillman is the creator of archetypal psychology and one of the scholars who clearly state that it is time for psychology to leave the sterile office and enter among the people – into architecture, into law, and above all, into life! He left the Jung Institute in Zurich, where he had been director, upon realizing that modern psychological schools are the same corporations that today have become rigid structures, having lost the knowledge bequeathed by those to whom they otherwise supposedly bow and behind whose name they hide.

Carl Jung and his Tower in Bollingen

The construction of a physical home brings to the surface the “architecture” of our lineage, activates transgenerational (ancestral) memory, and requires a grounding in the collective unconscious. In his autobiographical book Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung describes in detail how the building of his tower in Bollingen was a materialization of his unconscious and a descent to his ancestors.

Jung writes that when he began to build the house, he felt a powerful pressure from the unlived lives of his ancestors. He believes that we carry in our blood the questions to which our grandmothers, grandfathers, and forefathers failed to answer. For him, the construction of the tower was an alchemical process — driving a root into the earth of the lineage in order to give physical form to collective memory. With each subsequent wing that he added over the years, Jung shares that he achieved a deeper integration of the Self and reconciliation with his family’s past.

His tower provided him with a place where he could live in his “second personality” — the one connected to eternity and roots, far from the noise of modern progress. The construction period was exceptionally long. Jung built the tower over the course of 32 years (from 1923 to 1955). The process was not planned in advance with an architectural blueprint, but rather followed the stages of his own psychological maturation (individuation). The construction moved through four main phases, each of which was connected to a turning point in his life.

“At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life, I am most deeply myself… There I live in my second personality and see life in the round, as something forever coming into being and passing on. My house is built as if ancestors had lived in it before me… I feel that I have answered questions which my parents and ancestors left unresolved.”

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung

The famous philosopher, culturologist, writer, and historian of religions Mircea Eliade describes in his works how, for the traditional man, the construction of a house is a repetition of the creation of the world. When the foundations of a new home are laid, it always requires a “sacrifice” or a grounding in the center of the world (Axis Mundi). This center is a vertical axis that connects the underworld (the world of the dead, ancestors, the past) with the sky (the future, the spirit). Consequently, according to Eliade, you cannot build an intimate and sacred space “above” without having asked for permission and without having connected with the roots “below.”

Construction is a crisis of transformation. The transition from a state of “having no home” to “having a home” strips away the ego’s defenses. It is then that the deepest archetypes are activated:

On a personal level: You build your new identity and maturity, striving toward your Self.

On an ancestral and collective level: You transform into a sovereign ruler who lays the foundations for the next generation, which requires you to stand face to face with the legacy (emotional, psychological, and karmic) of those before you.

In Law: My Home Is My Castle

When we look at the home hermetically, archetypally, and through the prism of law, we discover that legal science does not view the home merely as a building, but as a spatial expression of human dignity and inviolability. In law, the home is a sacred sanctuary where state power stops and the individual becomes an absolute sovereign. Today, the invasion of the home occurs more and more frequently, and the fact that people voluntarily “expose” their entire home and everything happening within it to the whole world is an expression of the lack of a home within themselves, of its inviolability, intimacy, and sacredness. Inviting the whole world or thousands of people into your home is not a good idea. And anyone who has tried it or continues to do so would do well to reflect on why they do it and what they lack to do it. And above all – whom and what they are inviting (admitting) into their home.

The expression “my home is my castle” originates from a historic judicial ruling by the English judge and jurist Sir Edward Coke in the famous Semayne’s Case of 1604. In it, he recorded the famous words:

“The house of every one is to him as his Castle and Fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose.”

With this ruling, Coke sets a clear boundary against royal power. Even state sheriffs and tax collectors do not have the right to invade a private home without an explicit, strictly justified legal warrant. Sir Edward Coke actually codified in secular law something that had existed as a cosmic and religious law for millennia. The Romans had the maxim Domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium – The home is the safest refuge for everyone. Invading someone else’s home was considered sacrilege because the lares (the guardian spirits of the family) resided there.

In the Book of Deuteronomy (24:10-11) there is an astonishing legal text: “When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into their house to get what they are offering as a pledge. Stay outside and let the neighbor to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you.” Even when someone owes you money and you are in the right, Divine law forbids you from crossing their threshold, so as not to humiliate their dignity within their personal sanctuary.

In a hermetic sense, the body is the home of the soul, and the house is the home of the body. Law recognizes this analogy: violating the boundaries of the home (a search without a judicial warrant) is treated with almost the same gravity as physical violence against the person.

Law proves what psychologists assert: the home is not a commodity; it is a territory of the spirit. Therefore, when the law states “my home is my castle,” it does not mean thick stone walls and weapons. The law proclaims that the threshold of your home is an invisible yet sacred boundary that transforms an ordinary person into an independent ruler of their own life. An attempted invasion of it can manifest in both the visible and the invisible worlds. That is why it is important for the home to be consecrated, cleaned, and for us to be mindful of what we keep and whom we admit into it. This is also where the rituals of the Church originate — though it has filled its temple with merchants.

In order not to make hollow claims, I will provide an example from the last few years. Since the house in which I live and work is located opposite a monastery (where I was baptized as a child), the view of it is before my eyes every day. Last year, the narrow alley (measuring only 3 meters wide and separating my house from the monastery) was completely overflowing with cars so that people could vote in the monastery courtyard for those who would rule over them. I pondered for how many years (in Bulagria) first the schools, and now even the churches, have been turned into an extension of greed and corruption. We can only imagine the energy of intention with which people go to vote for politicians inside a church. This is why the symbolism hidden behind events always reveals the bigger picture, as long as we make the effort to think and synthesize connections.

In both Bulgarian and international law, the concept of “the care of a good custodian” (originating from the Roman bonus pater familias) obligates a person to approach a property or an asset with attention, reason, and responsibility. In psychological terms, this means that the right of ownership or use requires maturity (the integration of the Ego/the Self). It is not enough to simply rent or own something (a body, an ancestral legacy, a house). The Universe and the Law require you to invest psychic energy into it. If you are a poor custodian of your body — it falls ill. If you are a poor custodian of your ancestral memory — the traumas repeat themselves. The “rent” of life is paid precisely through the quality of this care.

The institute of acquisitive prescription (from the Roman Usucapio – to take through use) is one of the deepest philosophical phenomena in law. It states the following: If an owner has abandoned their property and for a period of years (for example, 10 years) another person possesses it openly, undisturbed, and cares for it continuously, the law strips the ownership from the first and grants it to the second.

This is a triumph of real presence over formal right. The land (and the unconscious) belongs to the one who cultivates it, not to the one who simply holds a document for it. In the context of lineage, you may be a “genetic heir” to great ancestors (holding a “title deed” to a powerful lineage), but if you do not care for this potential, you lose it. Conversely, a person who was “adopted” or an outsider to an environment can, through love, care, and grounding, build a deeper root in that house or community than the blood heir. Time and care give birth to the root, not mere biology.

Modern scams involving acquisitive prescription are a perfect example of what Jung calls the archetype of the Trickster (the Swindler / the Shadow). When we sever the sacred, moral connection with the land and turn it merely into a tool for rapid enrichment, crime is born.

Prescription fraud is an attempt to “steal a root” by artificial means — to mimic care and presence that are factually absent, through false witnesses and documents.

In a metaphorical sense, these are the people who attempt to appear spiritually evolved or emotionally wealthy (to demonstrate a “Home”), without actually having performed the heavy, years-long inner work of digging foundations and grounding. The law, much like the psyche, attempts to balance the stability of the old (the owner) and the energy of the new (the possessor). Fraud emerges when the ego attempts to cheat Time.

Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths: What Do They Tell Us About the Home?

In Dreams: Jung proved that when we dream of an unfamiliar house or discover new, secret rooms within our own home, our unconscious is communicating that we are ready to integrate a new, unknown part of our personality (a new talent, a repressed emotion, or a calling). If the house in the dream is collapsing, our Ego-structure is in crisis.

In Fairy Tales: Think about fairy tales — everything of importance occurs around or inside the house. The gingerbread house of the witch in “Hansel and Gretel” is a symbol of the shadow of the Great Mother archetype, who wishes to devour the children. The Beast’s castle in Beauty and the Beast reflects his depressed, wild, and untamed Shadow, which languishes and sinks into thorns until the Anima (Beauty) infuses love and life into it. The castle or the house in a fairy tale always expresses the psychic state of its ruler.

In Mythology: The first home of humanity is the Cave or the Sacred Center (Axis Mundi). In myths, building a home is a repetition of Cosmogony — an act of creation through which man transforms Chaos (wild nature) into Cosmos (an ordered, protected world).

With Whom and Where We Live

Look around you. Where and with whom are you living right now? If you are 35+ and still sharing a floor (or floors) with your parents under the guise of false morality, concern, and loyalty, you are simply refusing to grow up. If you live in a perfect palace but feel coldness and sterility inside, you are inhabiting a golden cage of your own Ego. If you are living with a man or a woman with whom you are merely roommates, yet you continue to delude yourself that you are not alone and that you are a “family” before society, you are caught in the snare of the very same trap that often repeats the vicious family circle you supposedly escaped long ago.

Yes, it is precisely an escape that, in the recent past until not long ago, drove young women to leap out of their homes at the age of 16, 18, or 20. If you ask them today why, most of the gibberish about “great love” will deflate under the weight of the truth that, for one reason or another, they simply wanted to run away from home. Unfortunately, in most such cases, these young women find themselves in a mirror-image family model, and history repeats itself in the same vicious circle.

The argument for the “traditional family” and “how generations lived before” is the most common psychological shield I have ever heard. This is a classic rationalization — people use isolated historical facts to justify their unconscious dependence and fear of independence, often using economic considerations as a shield. 100-150 years ago, the cohabitation of three generations in a single patriarchal house was not a matter of “emotional closeness,” but a strict economic necessity for survival.

Today, we have no need to till the field together just to avoid starving to death. Modern cohabitation in large “ancestral homes” is not an economic symbiosis, but a psychological codependency. Today, there is no hierarchy, but rather eternal domestic warfare over who buys the bread and how the grandchildren are raised. This destroys all three generations. In the past, the land required many hands to cultivate it. The house was a small factory. Back then, there was a strict hierarchy and an absolute internal law. The Patriarch commanded, and the young obeyed unconditionally. There was a clear structure, harsh as it may have been. Today, even if the old law still exists, the new conditions and the rhythm of the evolution of consciousness demand new laws — laws that respect hierarchy and stand upon the integrated, reflected experience of the past. This experience is wisdom. Without knowing the past, we fail to recognize the present, and the future will continue to repeat the past until it is integrated and transformed. And this occurs slowly and gradually on an individual level.

Another phenomenon that I have been observing over the past 15 years is how many people do not feel at ease “at home” in the place where they live. Usually, when we find ourselves in a given location, within the very first few seconds we internally know whether we “belong there” or not. Despite this, many people, due to various considerations, desires, or dependencies, remain in that place. No matter what they do, however, they can never manage to feel it as a home. Women typically possess a stronger radar for this, yet they often silence it; for if they were to heed it, they would no longer be able to hide behind their shadow — which frequently conceals that of the devouring mother and actually serves as a bridge to their animus.

More and more frequently in everyday conversations, I hear someone share that they do not want to go back home. The home is the symbol of that intimate realm which reigns supreme in psychological terms. For you to not want to return home, for whatever reason, clearly demonstrates that you have lost the intimate. And regardless of whether you live with someone, with your family, or alone, it would be wise to ask yourself the question — what is it that terrifies me about going home? What is this truth that I refuse to see?

The other polarity also exists — for a person to encapsulate themselves within their home and refuse to go outside. In that case, the question is: what am I hiding from the world, and what am I running away from externally that I am concealing in my home, meaning, within myself? Am I afraid of others seeing it, or am I rather terrified of seeing it within myself? Am I captive to my own projections, or to those of others?

Not infrequently during sessions, clients share with me how their spouse does not wish to live with them, yet they remain “in the name of the family.” This remark, though seemingly “noble,” is always a red flag that the very person insisting they “want to save the family” is the one whose shadow has occupied and siphoned the space, punishing the other with their presence. This is a parasitic, forceful, and controlling energy. No family is saved through violence and the “re-education” of the other person, who is expected to see “the truth.” Paradoxically, the moment they actually do see it, they will eliminate the parasitic energy instantly, while also discovering their own shadow — because without this confrontation, nothing will change. Such relationships are mirror-like, and the roles of victim and perpetrator rotate in a vicious circle.

The way we care for our space demonstrates whether we are ready for change. You can call in a television crew to give you a free renovation, but if your psychic world is in decay, the new home will quickly turn into the old swamp. Space always resets itself to the level of our consciousness. It happens, of course, that when our intention is pure and clear, even if we are in difficulty, unknown friends arrive to help turn the idea of our dreamed home into reality.

Individual and Collective Life

Carl Jung makes a very clear distinction between the existence of the traditional (tribal/collective) man and the modern individual. In the past, people lived entirely within the collective consciousness — you were not an individual; you were “the son of John” or “the daughter-in-law of Peter.” Personal identity and self-actualization did not exist as concepts. At the same time, it was no accident that people used to ask “Whose people do you belong to?”, as the lineage indicates potential and tasks, and the Bulgarian proverb “a monkey gives birth to monkeys, a gourd gives birth to gourds” carries encoded information.

Today, in the 21st century, the human psyche has evolved. Modern man has a need for individuation — to discover who he is outside the matrix of ancestral and collective expectations. Jung points out that the greatest harm to a child is the unlived life of their parents. When you remain living with your parents at 30+, you cease to live your own life and begin to relive or service theirs. Though this holds entirely true even if you are on the other side of the world, having run away from your roots, which nevertheless continue to live inside you.

Care vs. Enmeshment: There is an immense difference between helping, loving, and caring for your aging parents (which is mature and humane) and sharing a roof with them, allowing them to control your emotional climate.

Psychological maturity requires separation. In Hermeticism, for something new to be born, the elements must first divide (Separatio). If you do not separate yourself physically and spatially, you never become a true adult. You remain in the position of a child who secretly hates their parents because they are in the way, yet lacks the courage to leave under the pretext of “taking care of them.”

Since Carl Jung also views the home as a material symbol of the human psyche, according to him, the basement represents the unconscious, while the upper floors represent the conscious Ego. When a person lives in a space “detached” from the earth — in a box that is absolutely identical to that of their neighbor — a crisis of individuation occurs. The lack of uniqueness in the space makes it difficult for the mind to project its own identity onto the environment.

Location, View, History

The location, history, and architectural blueprints of a home are the geological strata of the unconscious. The earth beneath our feet possesses memory, and the way we relate to it reveals our psychological maturity.

Who lived here before us? This is the first question in the psychoanalysis of space. Every house has its own “spirit of the place” (Genius Loci). If you buy an old house, you are also buying its ancestral and energetic matrix. If violence or severe illnesses occurred there — or, conversely, beautiful memories and high culture — these unconscious models remain within the walls as an emotional imprint. This is why the expression “be careful what you say, for even the walls have ears” exists across various cultures and languages. When a person moves in without a purification process, they often begin to unconsciously repeat someone else’s fate. It is vital to examine: whose home are we living in? Whose psychological matrix do we find ourselves in? Our own, or are we repeating someone else’s? Are we processing (transforming) it, or are we stuck in the same swamp? Even if the walls are new, is the interior furniture outdated? Is it valuable, or do we need to replace it?

The View as a Horizon of the Mind: Where do your windows look out to? Toward the wide horizon and the mountain (a striving for the spirit, freedom, and scale) or toward the neighbor’s wall and the gray prison of the inner courtyard (a constricted ego, fear of the world, encapsulation)? In Hermeticism, the view is the direction in which you channel your vital life energy (Psyche).

The earth beneath our feet remembers. Moving into a house without researching who lived in it and what stories its walls conceal is pure psychological blindness. However, an even greater absurdity occurs when we build a brand-new house. We pour foundations, purchase expensive materials, and… right there on the architectural blueprint, we draw a separate floor for the parents or for our already grown-up children. Parents who, regardless of their status and means in society, refuse to allow their grown children to separate.

This is an architectural castration of the future. You are building a new home, but within its foundations, you are bricking in the old ancestral trap and codependency. Because that new, large floor will not save your children — it will simply leave them as eternal tenants within the space of your ambitions, control, and fear of the lack of meaning with which to fill your own life. A true alchemical vessel requires one space for one mature identity. Everything else is a horror story with a modern facade.

If, for instance, your home is located opposite a church, a school, or is built on a site where significant collective events have taken place, the space carries that memory — and consequently, that energy — which provides clear indications of what can and should happen there. Look around, search, and discover the symbolism for yourself.

When we live in a large apartment building, the collective energy of the people there also inhabits and becomes part of your space. This is why movement is essential.

Psychological Effects of Living in Large Apartment Buildings

In large apartment buildings, thin walls and noise disrupt these boundaries. The psyche perceives external sounds as an invasion of personal space, which keeps the nervous system in a state of constant background anxiety.

Living in mass-produced “socialist-era apartment blocks” and the modern skyscrapers of megacities represents two different sides of the same global process: urbanization. In the psychology of architecture and urban sociology, these two phenomena are viewed as distinct spatial attempts to cope with overpopulation, yet they possess fundamentally different psychological dynamics.

From a purely evolutionary standpoint, people gather where the resources are (jobs, education, healthcare). Our psyche is programmed to sacrifice spatial comfort for the sake of economic security.

Psychological Adaptation: Man is one of the most adaptive creatures. We grow accustomed to the noise, the lack of space, and anonymity, turning them into the “new normal.” However, the price for this is often paid subconsciously — through higher levels of anxiety, insomnia, and the need for constant digital stimulation.

Ultimately, whether it was a communist-era popular buildings or today we have a luxury skyscrapers, high-rise construction is a compromise between economic reality and our biological need for space, nature, and silence.

Contemporary environmental psychologists and urbanists (such as Colin Ellard and Robert Gifford) identify several key phenomena characteristic of people living in large apartment buildings:

Large residential complexes give birth to a profound psychological and social paradox — overpopulation combined with radical loneliness. Constant cohabitation with hundreds of strangers in elevators and shared corridors leads to what is known as “social saturation.” To protect itself from this excess noise and energetic pollution, the human psyche activates a defense mechanism of psychological distancing and sought-after anonymity. Within these spaces, the phenomenon of the “loss of secured space,” as defined by urban planners, also manifests: since common areas are perceived as belonging to no one, responsibility becomes diluted.

A person maintains cleanliness only up to their own threshold, turning the external environment into a source of background anxiety. While socialist-era blocks attempted to impose an artificial collectivism through standardization, modern skyscrapers encapsulate luxury within vertical ecosystems that replace grounding with an illusion of status, yet deepen social isolation. Today, even without communism, alas, people continue to want to look and live in the exact same way. And they do so completely voluntarily. Unfortunately, many of them lack imagination, and consequently, originality.

The “Detached Root” Syndrome (Oscar Newman)

Loss of Safe Space: In his classic work Defensible Space, architect and urban psychologist Oscar Newman proves that residents of large apartment blocks experience a lower sense of responsibility toward common areas (corridors, spaces between buildings). Since no one feels these zones as “their own,” they are easily neglected, which intensifies the feeling of weightlessness and insecurity.

Vertical Isolation: The higher a person lives (above the 5th or 6th floor), the more psychologically detached they become from the earth, nature, and street life. Studies show that this can increase levels of depressive states, especially among mothers with young children and the elderly, for whom going downstairs requires effort.

Living in a large apartment block demands conscious efforts to compensate for spatial deficits — for instance, through personalizing the interior, seeking out greenery, and building small micro-communities within the condominium.

The Le Corbusier Effect and “Boxes for Living”

The famous architect Le Corbusier created the concept of the apartment block as a “machine for living.” Although his idea was to foster an organized community, psychologists later noted that gray, monotonous, and geometric architecture without natural curves and greenery increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The human brain evolved in a natural environment, and the lack of a view toward a living foothill or park space suppresses the creative impulse and cognitive recovery.

The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

“Space calls for action, and before action, the imagination is at work. It mows and plows. We should have to speak of the benefits of all these imaginary actions. Psychoanalysis has made numerous observations on outward-projecting behavior, on extroverted characters who are ready at any moment to give exterior expression to their intimate impressions.”

The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

The French philosopher and phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard wrote one of the most incredible works on the psychology of the home – The Poetics of Space. He introduced the concept of “topoanalysis” (the psychoanalysis of spaces). In this stroke of genius, Bachelard guides us toward the home, which is our very first corner of the Universe. It is a psychic integration of our past, present, and future.

Bachelard argues that the home in which we grew up (and the home we build) is not merely geometry, but a beehive of memory. When a person begins to construct a new space, they unconsciously recreate or attempt to repair the “primeval home” of their childhood and of their ancestors. According to Bachelard, descending into the basement and laying the foundations is a striving toward the “roots of being,” where we meet the shadows of the past in order to extract from them stability for the future.

Bachelard’s core message is that if a person does not possess an intimate and conscious space, their psyche scatters into the Cosmos. The home is the place where the Spirit grounds itself in Matter. He points out that the house provides us with both the “illusion of stability” and the physical framework within which our mind learns to dream.

Both Bachelard and Jung, as well as many other scholars, describe the house as a vertical being — from the basement (where our unconscious fears are buried) to the attic (where we structure rational thought, or more precisely, the Mind).

I remember that as a child, during the summer when I visited my mother’s village in the Plovdiv region to stay with her parents, I adored going down into the large cellar to search for treasures. And even today, when I imagine being there, the feeling is just as vivid. The cellar was organized with beautiful shelves stocked with winter preserves and compotes. It was no ordinary cellar; it was an entire treasury. Reaching the very end, the cellar made a slight turn, as I felt the cold draft of the stone walls and the aroma of wood and moisture. After the turn, there was a small space reaching the wall, which also had a tiny window looking out toward the street. It was exactly there that it was filled with old objects, meticulously arranged, which seemed to me exceptionally valuable and interesting.

Thinking about it now, I also remember experiencing that tingling sensation of discovery, and I couldn’t wait for the next adventurous descent into the dark and the unknown. In a strange way, going down there brought me a sense of coziness. I would always discover something valuable, which I would then bring out into the light of the courtyard under the rays of the warm sun, and continue to play with it. Back then, I didn’t yet know that years later I would become an analytical and alchemical psychologist, working precisely with people’s shadow, so that together we could descend and discover the treasures hidden within the unconscious.

Digital Exhibitionism: Whom Are We Inviting Into Our Home?

The greatest paradox of contemporary society lies in the contrast between the struggle for physical inviolability and the voluntary surrender of personal space in the digital world. While people are rightfully outraged by the intrusion of institutions into their homes, they simultaneously and voluntarily open the gates of their fortresses through social networks.

The “streaming” of children, bedrooms, family dinners, and intimate moments is digital exhibitionism and a desperate psychological cry for attention in the era of urban anonymity. In exchange for dopamine signals (“likes”), modern man trades his sacred space, transforming it from a sanctuary into a public stage set. In a hermetic and energetic sense, this constant exposure to foreign eyes destroys the aura of the home, removes the invisible protective boundary of the individual, and turns the once inaccessible castle into a digital reality show where the shadows of parodic grotesque and falsehood dance.

Returning Home

In a world of concrete beehives, digital window displays, and distorted material laws, the true fortress is not built of bricks alone – they are a symbol for the construction and expansion of consciousness, culture, and shared values. When a family is united in spirit and around a shared hearth, it possesses the power to transform even the most confined urban space into a personal temple. The exit from the urban trap, however, does not require a radical escape from civilization.

Today, more and more people are rediscovering balance through a new model of living – the creation of small, beautiful houses amidst nature, located on the periphery of major cities. This architectural hybrid offers the best of both worlds: it maintains access to the economic and cultural resources of the megacity, while returning to the individual the right to personal land, a clear horizon, and silence. Choosing such a space means returning to the natural law of grounding. Ultimately, architecture may offer us boxes, but it depends on our individual consciousness whether we will remain prisoners within them, or whether we will build our true, natural, and spiritual castle.

At the end of this article, I offer you a key to the Home by Blaga Dimitrova, and I challenge you, dear reader, to dive deeper within yourself and to reflect on what your current home symbolizes and reveals.

Homeless… Why do I need a home?

The world calls to me through the window –
unbuttoned, endless, universal!
Yet a window is needed to behold it.

That is how my vision is wired.

From the inside out – a longing.
From the inside out – a wonder.
From the inside out – toward everything.

Homeless – means worldless.

I stand on the threshold and wonder:
What meaning do I infuse into the symbol of “Home”?
What is its actual core?

What is the home today?

The Key, 1987, Blaga Dimitrova