House As a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home [Paperback]

Clare Cooper Marcus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2006

House as a Mirror of Self presents an unprecedented examination of our relationship to where we live, interwoven with compelling personal stories of the search for a place for the soul. Marcus takes us on a reverie of the special places of childhood--the forts we made and secret hiding places we had--to growing up and expressing ourselves in the homes of adulthood. She explores how the self-image is reflected in our homes; power struggles in making a home together with a partner; territory, control, and privacy at home; self-image and location; disruptions in the boding with home; and beyond the "house as ego" to the call of the soul.
As our culture is swept up in home improvement to the extent of having an entire TV network devoted to it, this book is essential for understanding why the surroundings that we call home make us feel the way we do. With this information we can embark on home improvement that truly makes room for our soul.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is a refreshing, unique, and fascinating look at how we feel about our homes, how we shape them to suit ourselves, why some homes make is feel safe and secure and at ease, and others make us paranoid and uncomfortable. This book, in my opinion, should be legally required reading for every architect, interior designer, and real estate agent. For the rest of us, it is a surprisingly interesting look at the meaning of home. Clare Cooper Marcus's extensive and detailed interviews with people living in all kinds of homes, from illegal shacks to mansions, provide eye-opening insights into what "home" is, and how to create the feeling of home for you. It's about time someone finally wrote this book! --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Marcus's eye-opening study of peoples' emotional ties to their houses, apartments, cottages, trailers and other dwellings offers useful, often startling perspectives on what makes a house a home. Maintaining, as did Carl Jung, that one's home is a symbolic mirror of one's inner self, of unconscious wishes and emotions, she interviewed approximately 60 people in their domestic settings, some over a 10-year period. Several respondents excessively bonded to a residence or its contents as a substitute for close relationships with people; at the opposite extreme were those who were unable to settle down in one place because having a permanent abode was fraught with unresolved emotional issues from childhood. Marcus, an architecture professor at UC-Berkeley, ably explores how personal crises, the need for privacy, couples' power struggles, divorce and career changes affect one's feelings about, and design of, one's living environment. Case studies, self-help exercises and informants' color drawings (not seen by PW) of their dwellings support her presentation. 40,000 first printing; $80,000 ad/promo; QPB selection; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Nicolas-Hays, Inc; annotated edition edition (May 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892541245
• ISBN-13: 978-0892541249
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Determine what you REALLY want and need from your home, February 25, 2000

By 

Deborah Knittel (Versailles,KY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House As a Mirror of Self : Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home (Paperback)

I wish my husband and I had read this book before we began designing our new home instead of after the plans were done. I would have understood why the whole process was making me feel angry and negated, he would have understood why he was not more excited about the whole design process. We now understand why we haven't felt the nesting instinct in our present home and what unfufilled yearnings we brought to every place we have lived in alone and together. This book should be required reading for architects and interior designers and builders. It would change the questions they asked their clients and move all toward a more fulfilling experience. Instead of asking how many rooms do you need and how big should they be, a designer could help clients explore what they found nurturing in former homes and what emotional needs could be met in the design of their new spaces. Very Jungian, but easy to use with worksheets for exploring ideas on your own. The book brought tears to our eyes and answers to our unasked questions. I'm almost ready to dump the current plans and start all over again with new excitment and optomism.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening, November 12, 2002

By 

SharedJourneys (Treasure Coast FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House As a Mirror of Self : Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home (Paperback)

I found this book when I was undergoing my own deep personal transformation ten years ago. It helped me understand my own relationship to the homes I had created for clients and my self. As an interior designer and a contractor it is important to understand the calling of the client's psyche and meet those needs. There is so much focus now on the spiritual aspects of one's home, and feng shui does offer up its own insights, but using this book as a primer for understanding what is calling to you will lead you to a different more integrated understanding. A carpenter builds a house, the family makes it a home. Clare gives the reader a path to understanding this complex yet simple process. The book is easy to read and offers many good exercises to dialog with the inner self. I highly recommend it to designers and psychologist alike.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, May 20, 2004

By 

Bette (East Coast USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: House As a Mirror of Self : Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home (Paperback)

This reads more like a textbook for an interior design course. It has little to do with the psychology of your own choice of home/setting. Like another reviewer said, the idea seemed fascinating, but the book disappoints right away, if not for the setup alone; the author overuses the same phrases and form to setup her next example. It is as though this were her thesis for design school. It could also pass for a really good new age book, that's how problem-centered it is. If you have watched "Designing for the Sexes" on HGTV, you have read this book. This book is only interesting and appropriate for interior designers, not for anyone seeking insight into our needs and choices when it comes to home.