Some of My Psychohistorical Homes

After urban renewal had condemned the brick building but before the wrecking ball had done its work in preparation for a downtown mall, I visited the first home I remember. It was early in my analysis when I was struggling to remember things about my early childhood. I kept asking my sister, a year-and-a-half older, what she recalled of our early lives living over “the store” at 317 State Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She had little to offer beyond what I had dredged up from my own dim memories and she was unwilling to talk about the sexual abuse she had suffered as a young girl at the hands of a stranger. Yet, it still felt good to have a loved one with whom I could probe the past. I tore the half-loose boards away from the door of the condemned building and we walked up the stairs to the apartment of our early childhood. What amazed me most was how small both the rooms and the windows were. In the eyes of the six-year-old who had last seen them, they were enormous, yet the man in his 30s found them to be small. This little apartment had been home and “the store” beneath it would continue to be home for many years to come. Though we no longer lived over “my father’s store” (never “my mother’s” or “my parents’ store”), it and the workshop in the back remained central to our sense of home. “My father’s store” was where both parents worked and where one could always find Mom. In the busy season when my parents worked 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., at times the store seemed more like home than did “home.” After all, home is about attachment to people you love and who love and care about you.

While earning my doctoral degree in history, I was often heard to say, “I live in the li-

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brary.” For me it was a statement not only of where I spent considerable time but also of intent: I felt I should make the library my home until my PhD was achieved. Yet, I found myself working long hours at various low-paying jobs and wanting to spend more time with my young family.

Houses and homes have always fascinated both my wife Geri and me. Almost 20 years ago when her Fortune 500 company was downsizing, she was at a loss as to what she would do to make a living. The only options she could think of had to do with houses and homes. Her choice to enter the real estate business has meant that she has observed and helped people make a decision regarding the space that they will seek to make into a home. At least as much as anything else, this decision, with its profound financial and personal ramifications, is based upon emotion.

Some people are new house buyers, because they are willing to pay a high price in terms of money, waiting for its completion, and aggravation, to have a dwelling built according to their specifications that has never been lived in by another human being. Since there is so little undeveloped land left in our county, many houses are being torn down to satisfy the costly psychic needs of new house buyers. Much of this construction is for the sake of building what Peter Petschauer refers to as “trophy houses.” Whether these will be turned into homes depends on the people involved. Geri often notes that what sells a house is the furniture, decorations, and style of the occupants; all things that will leave with the former owners after the sale is closed. Yet house buying, much like love, living together, and marriage, is such an important decision that it must have a powerful emotional base to have a fair chance of success. It takes more than dollars-and-cents justifications for your average homebuyer to face the prospect of paying a mortgage for the next 15 or 30 years. There is such ambivalence regarding this great commitment that many sales of homes are never completed: attorneys and home inspectors often fuel the flames of doubt that terminate the sale. Marital relationships are stressed by these decisions. I have sometimes joked with my wife about her doing more marital therapy as a real estate broker than I have ever done as a therapist.

How does one make an inhospitable place into a home? Overseas, in the army, I put a potted cactus plant on my footlocker as an open expression of my individualism. The sergeant might drop a quarter on my bed to test how tightly it was made but if he touched my cactus he would pay a prickly price for invading my home turf. For the next quarter century, I used plants, which I associated with the small ivy plant my mom grew, to mark territory. The less space I had, the more important the plants were to me for a sense of psychic well-being. The stuff filling our homes includes transitional objects connected to our loved ones and other sources of comfort.

As every dog-walker knows, certain territorial animals mark their turf by urinating on the boundaries of it. It is my impression that humans mark their territory by putting their stuff in it, individualizing it, making changes, having some construction done, and planting what they want on the property. When I look out my window, I proudly stare at stonewalls I built, a patio we designed and I laid, and a great variety of flowers and plants I planted, watered, weeded, fertilized, and of which we sometimes enjoy the blossoms. There are others who also claim the same territory that I fondly look out upon, despite the fact that they do not pay taxes. These include birds, chipmunks, deer, groundhogs, moles, rabbits, raccoons, and squirrels. Despite my complaints that I do all the work and that they view our garden as a salad bar, these critters are willing to accept our making a home on their turf—so long as we continue to provide the finest delicacies in the form of flower buds for them to eat. Each species, as Darwin would say, finds its own niche in which to build a home.

Psychohistory Forum Research Associate Ralph Colp has found a home in the niche of Darwin’s studies. In the 19 years I’ve known this extremely knowledgeable psychiatrist and scholar of Charles Darwin, he has been most energized by his work on Darwin. Vacations are a time when he can examine additional diaries and papers of Darwin in Shrewsbury and other parts of England. His statement, “I really found a home in Darwin studies,” led me to invite him to write about this and Darwin’s sense of home. Ralph has promised Clio’s Psyche an article on the latter.

I like to think that one of the reasons for the success of the Psychohistory Forum is that we have helped some people find an intellectual home in our organization. Breaking bread as a group after our meetings is part of what makes this a homey group but mostly it is a question of developing the psychohistory paradigm in concert with each other, learning together, and caring about each other as human beings. The considerable time and thought I devote to our fledgling field is partly

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about helping to build a psychohistorical edifice that some may call home.

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