Exploring the ideal home in psychotherapy: Two case studies

This paper illustrates the contribution of 'ecoanalysis of the home' to the psychotherapy of two patients. Ecoanalytical tasks revealed how the patients' relations to their ideal home-the meanings they attributed to it as well as its spatial configuration-related to their difficulties. The depressed patient understood that her attempt to reconstruct her childhood home in her new environment-a kibbutz in Israel-was part of a fantasy to recreate her 'lost paradise'. This constituted an obstacle in developing an attachment to the kibbutz and was also the reason for some of her social problems within it. The other patient, who had been traumatized by rape, regarded her ideal home as a representation of her body. Doing so helped her talk about the I-ape and recognize its impact on her present sexual problems. (C) 1999 Academic Press.