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Our design is not only functional; it is an emotional skyscraper.
In this paper we address the relationship between psychoanalysis and architecture by focusing on two contemporary architectural structures, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the Jewish Museum, in Berlin, Germany. We ask whether there are “emotions in the stone,” that is, whether buildings, structures, and interior physical spaces affect us emotionally. And we ask whether psychoanalysis can help us answer this question. In particular, we draw upon two of Freud's essays, “Mourning and Melancholia” and “The Uncanny,” to illuminate this inquiry.
In one sense this paper attempts a classic “interpretation” or “application” of psychoanalytic theory: it uses psychoanalytic concepts to uncover psychological meanings along the lines of the applications of clinical psychoanalysis to art. Yet there are significant differences: the first psychoanalysts applied clinical concepts to culture the way one might apply a coat of paint to a wall in one's house. Our observations and interpretations are grounded in psychological interpretations that have been made by architects and historians—and not, for the most part, by psychoanalysts. The house, in a sense, is already painted in psychological hues—