Architecture addresses social structures which are a product of subjective structure; while a "common-sense", psychological interpretation might be that social structures are necessary to keep individual instincts under control, a more psychoanalytical consideration suggests that in fact social institutions and structures are created by the structure of the subject. Hence, for example, rather than the judicial system being in place to help us keep our violent urges under control, it is a product of obsessional structure and creates the illusion that all of us are animalistic creatures who would lose control were it not for the system.

The Western subject seems to have a need for an historical view, a plot-line as it were, a notion of the subject as having been caused. A perspective makes things bearable - we need to have a comfortable sense of inside versus outside. Yet, as we know from psychoanalysis, it is not that simple. We are divided, not complete, subjects and certainly not subjects with an inside and an outside. Perhaps good architecture should remind us of this, but gently, not without an element of surprise or even a degree of uncanniness, and when we are ready for it - like a good analyst. The essays collected in this volume explore the issue of psychoanalysis and architecture from varying and differing angles, attempting to shed light on the relation of the unconscious to the built environment, and vice-a-versa.