In my search for how others have thought about the issue of therapeutic space, I encountered some of the writing of Yi-Fu Tuan, a geographer. Tuan wrote a very interesting little book, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience in which he muses about how people think about space and place, home and neighborhood. One of his thoughts is that space is what we encounter when are are someplace new and unfamiliar and it becomes place as we learn its features and landmarks. This leads me to contemplate the fact that every time a new patient comes to see me, not only is the patient in a space which is not yet place, but so am I, because, though the physical features of the room are the same from patient to patient, the addition of a new person changes the space. As we begin the process of coming to know each other, we are each creating place, place which contains the other.
And I am pondering who the therapy space is for — the patient or the therapist? Or both?
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