Where is how: a conceptual analysis of place as a cultural co-actor in Western psychotherapy spaces

While research and traditional wisdom both emphasize the importance of connection to place in well-being, contemporary Western psychotherapy spaces are often decontextualized and framed as neutral, mirroring broader processes in architecture since the Modernist movement. In response to these developments, this work explores the givens and potentials of architecture as a cultural co-actor in psychotherapy, understood as a Western approach to healing. Drawing on literature, archival images, drawings and video, a cross-case study analysis explores how space acted as a therapeutic factor across the 20th century, spanning Sigmund Freud's consulting room in Vienna, Carl Gustav Jung's Bollingen Tower and Küsnacht residence, and Fritz Perls' Gestalt workshops at the Esalen Institute. This work finds that psychotherapy spaces represent imperfect translations of therapeutic modality and vary in their emphasis of an individual or collective understanding of psychological problems, their engagement with the body through movement and positionality, and their approach to inside-outside dynamics.