The meaning of home

1. “NOSTALGIA” – WHERE WE COME FROM
AND WHERE WE GO TO – THE MEANING OF
HOME
Joanna Kato
psychologist, Gestalt therapist, supervisor, trainer
Taormina 2016

2. Nostalgia – the meaning of the
word
• ΝΟΣΤΑΛΓΙΑ
• Greek language – νόστος – return
άλγος – pain, suffering
The pain of return – both the suffering that
has hold on someone when one is far
away and the pain one must endure in
order to return /Odysseas return/

3. HEIMWEH
• Heimweh, homesickness
• Swiss-German word – the name of an illness
first classified in the XVII /Historical Dictionary of the French Language/
• 1678 Jean-Jaques Harder describes
Homesickness – Heimweh, from which Swiss
mercenaries suffered.
• Since then several cases of illness were
described – when young people studied or went
to fight “away from home” and quickly recovered
once back home /B. Cassin, 2016/

4. literature
„Home is the place where,
when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
I should have called it
something you somehow
haven’t to deserve”
• Robert Frost 1955,p.38
• “The dead of the Hired Man”

5. „Home is where one is”
• A primary condition where ones presence
and entitlement are taken for granted.
• One does not have to earn the right to be
at home

6. In philosophy and psychology
o M. Heidegger – the notion of ‘taken-for-granted-at-homeness’ and
‘dread’ as a condition when we loose familiarity of the world. => a
serious ontological and existential disorientation takes place
o B. Cassin „When Are We Ever at Home?” home and
homelessness, exile and desire of homeland, nature and cultue,
rotedness and uproteedness, mother tongue and the land of the
fathers.
o K. G. Jung – the archetype of home is of ordered wholeness,
includes the archetype of father and mother
o D. W. Winnicott – “Home is where we start from”
/physical and psychological dimensions of home/
o J. Bowlby – home is the primary condition which provides space for
early interpersonal relationship

7. In children play
• A safe place
• A place free from attack
• A place that has to be reached as the goal
of a game

8. Meaning of home
• The dimensions of home – physical,
geographical, social, cultural, language
etc.
• Cluster of feelings which provide continuity
and sense of security
• Those feelings form a part of the core
‘substratum of identity’ (R. Papadopoulos, 2002)

9. • It containsIt contains physical and geographicalphysical and geographical features,features, aa
psychological locus of relatedness andpsychological locus of relatedness and
communion,communion, starts from ourstarts from our originorigin and goesand goes toto
the ultimate place of rest, beyond conflictthe ultimate place of rest, beyond conflict..
• Includes theIncludes the polaritpolaritiesies of seemingly oppositeof seemingly opposite
experiences – beginning and end, origin andexperiences – beginning and end, origin and
goal.goal.
• Home is both – the perceived locus of origin asHome is both – the perceived locus of origin as
well as the desired destinationwell as the desired destination (Papadopoulos 1987)(Papadopoulos 1987)
..

10. „Home” is the place where
• A sense of security develops, a feeling of
containment that is not usually consciously
appreciated.
• A basic and primary layer of our human
experience is formed.
• It is usually outside of the reach of
awareness until it is disturbed.

11. When this sense of security is lost
• We experience „nostalgic disorientation”
• A feeling of internal dislocation, dislodgement from the
experience of „being at home”.
• The loss of home is not only about the conscious loss of
family, belongings, sentimental and material values but
also it creates a disturbance (nostalgic disorientation)
which is close to ‘ontological insecurity’, ‘existential
anxiety’, ‘existential angst’, ‘dread’/sense of gap, an
absence, lack of confidence in one’s existence, a kind of
frozenness.
• Reactions like panic, depression, apathy, splitting,
suspiciousness are evoked.
• Most of difficulties are related to the attempt to restore
this type of dislocation

12. Experiment
• What comes to mind when you say:

13. What is it?
• Feeling?
• Sensation?
• Sound?
• Picture?
• Words?
• Song? Music?
• Body sensations?

14. In pairs /or groups of three/
• And how are You know, when you bring it
to awareness?
• Share what happens to You...

15. Experiment – non verbal
• find a ‘home’ place and an „away” place in
the room.
• move between the home and away
place /different types of movement – slow,
fast, straight, around, long complicated
way, sudden starts and stops, with a flow.
• choose a partner and take him/her to both
his/her home and away place and vice
versa.

17. References
• Bowlby J. Attachment and Human Development, 2002, 4, 230-242
• Lijtmaer R. Splitting and Nostalgia, 2001, Journal of the American Academy of
Psychoanalysis, 29(3), 428-438
• Papadopoulos N. The Movement Experiential Component of the training offered by
Renos and Nina Papadopoulos 13-15 June 2016 to Babel and Prometheus
• Papadopoulos R. RKP Athens Babel presentation, December 2014
• Papadopoulos R. Involuntary Dislocation: Home, Trauma, Resilence and Adversity
Activated Development, 2013
• Papadopoulos R. Therapeutic Care for Refugees – No Place Like Home, 2002
• Papadopoulos R. Nostalgic disorientation – presentation EVASP Rome 2010
• Papadopoulou N. The Body as Home unpublished nov. 2014
• Volkan D. V. Nostalgia as a Linking Phenomenon, Journal of applied
Psychoanalysyytic Studies, Vol. 1, No 22, 1999
• Winnicott D. Home is Where we Start From – Essays by a Psychoanalyst, !990,
Norton Paperback