The Design Concept
“My task is to make you hear, feel and see. That and no more, and that is everything. ”
Psychoanalysis is paradoxical – from the outset the patient is expected to ‘suspend disbelief’ and engage with the analyst, yet the analyst sits, physically and metaphorically, behind a veil in order to maintain the ‘boundaries’ of the professional consultation. Even though the relationship is ‘asymmetrical’ in nature – all going well, intimacy and trust grow over time. The design of the therapy environment plays a significant role in development and maintenance of this trust.
A full-office renovation was an intrinsic part of this PhD project and was completed over six months in 2019-20. I was fortunate to have completed the renovation literally three weeks before the first Covid-19 lockdowns.
The Design Elements
The Storyboard
There is a paucity of psychoanalytic literature on the implementation of a ‘ground up’ therapy-room makeover. A renovation of this kind and scope is a project that for many practitioners, for various reasons, would be too onerous to undertake. Therapists therefore ‘make do’ with their original consulting rooms, unchanged for years, even decades. In addition, for those that do not have physical control over their consulting spaces, say due to restrictive rental or leasing arrangements, making major changes to their offices is problematic. Though one assumes that practitioners’ tastes and approaches will change over the whole lifespan of a psychoanalytic practice, my ‘entropy’ around resisting change would have prevailed if it weren’t for the PhD imperative. Apart from it feeling like too much effort, I also rationalised it would have been too disruptive to patients’ therapy.
There came a point when my therapy space seemed to ‘cry out’ for change. Was my reluctance part of becoming stale, like my tired-looking office? Why would I expect my patients to challenge themselves if I don’t do the same?
1. The designers’ reference to colour psychology and the choice of blue
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-color-psychology-of-blue-2795815
2. The blue colour was chosen by Dulux as colour of the year 2020
https://www.dwell.com/article/pantone-color-of-the-year-2020-classic-blue-9d0109c0
3. BlueHealth website outlining research on how urban blue spaces can affect individual wellbeing
https://bluehealth2020.eu