You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This unusual collection of essays has been edited by two very well-known explorers of mind, culture, and space, each of whom has made original and innovative contributions on his own. They have now gathered classic and contemporary essays that address a new dimension of our psychological scope and knowledge.
Usually hybrid terms are suspect—they attempt marriages that may not be “made in heaven.” In this instance, however, this criticism does not hold. In this era of territoriality as a potential focus of conflict, whether in the geographic or even in the professional domain, we cannot ignore the symbolic and actual attachment individuals have for their “turf.”
Vamik Volkan's brief but excellent foreword sets the stage for the volume. The editors and he carefully note that “psychogeography” is not a new concept; it puts what we have known from many sources into a unified context. It brings together ideas that extend our notions of representation—self, others, and now place. The symbolic meaning of home, homeland, religious sites, mountains, caves, and other geographic entities is well known to us. In recent years the plight of the homeless has appropriately been given major political-social-economic and psychological emphasis. In 1986, I first presented findings and hypotheses on migration, voluntary and coerced. This work on the psychological reactions set off by leaving one's homeland and the relationship to the mourning-liberation process was further elaborated and published in 1989 (Pollock, 1989a). The Grinbergs' (1989) book also related to this topic.
The reactions to earthquakes, such as those in Mexico, Armenia (USSR), and San Francisco, studied by Rangell (1976) and K. Erikson (1976) reaffirm what Volkan writes in his foreword: not only is there an attachment to the ground and