Spatial Disorientation

This chapter examines the intersections of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic theories with the phenomenology of space and architecture, Gestalt psychology, and the history of architectural archetypes. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ruminations on the space of hallucinations and dreams and Rudolf Arnheim’s architectural reading of Freud’s diagram of psychological structures lead to a revealing of the structure and experience of space that is communicable as an archetype. I propose a critical reading of two dreams analyzed by Marie-Louise von Franz and Aldo Carotenuto which evoke the archetypal space of the labyrinth. The chapter situates the labyrinth – associated with the individuation process in Jungian psychoanalysis – in the historical context of Cretomania, a cultural phenomenon induced by the archaeological excavations at Knossos. The labyrinth archetype is also discussed in light of the reflection on the origins of architecture as an aporetic situation and a manifestation of the spatial uncanny. By returning to some interpretations of Thomas De Quincey’s passage on Piranesi’s Carceri , the chapter clarifies the specificity of architectural representation as an image and as a structure of narration.