Ethos, Embodiment, Psychosis: Losing One’s Home-Identity Stakes

Abstract

AbstractIn reference to phenomenology, the living body, feeling and acting, is approached as having an essential mediating function: at the same time, it brings us into the world and supports our identity. In “Tania Z’” story, she falls into a serious crisis following her parents’ decision to sell the shared family home. She experiences this not only as a betrayal but also as a loss of the “envelope” that previously allowed her to move safely in the world. She feels hurt even in her own body space and loses her ability to continue living.Tania Z speaks to us in a revealing way of the singular status of the home: a cultural work that can be possessed, transmitted, or destroyed according to certain social rules. But it is also, like the body, a privileged space of the “self,” with the loss of which the subject may be threatened in her or his ability to survive. This is at least what happens in situations of vulnerability where the person needs to rely on a stable physical space to gather as one’s self and feel safe in the world.