The Psycho-Geographical Home: “Homemaking” In the Frontier

This article proposes a model for exploring the psycho-geographical home incorporating psychoanalytical and geographical perspectives as significant elements for understanding homemaking on the Israeli frontier. It seeks to understand the deeper roots of homemaking in the self through the psychoanalytic lens of object relations, beginning with a brief overview of the psychoanalytic literature connected to notions of home and homemaking. We find that homemaking serves as a mediating practice throughout life, because it projects a person’s internal home representation onto the home itself. The gaps found between the representations of a person’s internal home and that person’s physical/external home are discussed as a ‘potential space’. Residents of Israel’s Arava desert are the subjects of our examination of the multidimensional aspects of home and homemaking, as reflected verbally and visually in interviews, self-directed photographs of the participants’ home space and dynamic observations of their homes.