Architecture and the Mimetic Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of How Buildings Make and Break Our Lives

Buildings design us as much as we them. They shape our identity and sense of self in profound ways that are not always evident to architects and town planners, or even to those who think they know all there is to know about the building they inhabit. Misconceptions about what we require from our built environments are rife, not least because our responses to architecture are often difficult to measure, and are partly unconscious. Architecture and the Mimetic Self provides a useful theoretical guide to the most salient aspects of our unconscious behaviour in our identifications with buildings, explaining both how and why we are drawn to specific elements and features of architectural design.