By Suzanne Katanic
Estimated read time: 6–7 minutes

There is a house that sits vacant now. It waits quietly, layered in dust and time. The woodwork my father carved still hangs in the rafters, a suspended beauty left unfinished. It’s easy to miss if you don’t look up. For years, I didn’t. I didn’t know there was anything up there.

That is where this story begins: with the parts of the house and of ourselves we do not see.

The House as Symbol

In therapy, dreams, and analytic work, the house often emerges as a central symbol of the self. Marion Woodman wrote, “The unconscious is not a chaos, not a black hole, but a house with many rooms,” showing us the inner world is not disorder but a sacred interior. Each room becomes an invitation, a chance to explore, heal, and remember.

We dream of basements when we are called to dig into buried emotions and ancestral memory.
We dream of attics when something forgotten stirs, like an idea, a longing, or a truth packed away for years.
We dream of broken windows when our boundaries have been breached, a signal from the psyche that what protects and contains us needs care.

In this light, the house becomes more than shelter. It becomes a living metaphor for the feminine psyche Woodman described, layered, mysterious, and capable of transformation.

When Home Was Not Safe

But what happens when the house itself was a place of chaos, silence, or psychic rupture?
What if the first container of our lives, our home, taught us that beauty was fragile and safety unreliable?

The Emotional Blueprint

Our childhood homes do not just hold our furniture. They become the blueprint for our internal object world.

Was there space for you to speak?
Or did you learn to hold your tongue to keep the peace?
Was there warmth in the kitchen, or a chill that settled into your bones?

These are not just nostalgic memories. They are early templates that shape our capacity for trust, attachment, and self-regulation. We carry these structures inside us and unconsciously recreate them in adult life. The unpruned trees, the leaky faucet, the beautiful things left unfinished — all of it becomes metaphor. Sometimes it becomes a self-perpetuating symptom.

The Neglected House as a Mirror

Recently, I returned to the house. I trimmed the lower branches of a lemon tree, an act so small yet deeply symbolic. Afterward, the tree seemed to glow. It was as if the care I offered woke something that had been asleep for a long time. Later that day, a woman walked by and asked if she could buy some lemons. The tree had called to her.

This is the nature of the psyche. When we tend to what was ignored or denied, it begins to radiate vitality. Even when others do not know the story, they are drawn to what has been loved.

It made me wonder if a house can be emotionally neglected, and if so, whether it can be restored not just with repairs but with a different kind of care.

We often think healing requires catharsis or profound insight. Sometimes, though, it begins with sweeping a floor, hanging a picture, or listening to the creak of an old door, not to fix it but to finally hear what it has been trying to say.

In the Shadows

What was banished from the family home? What was shoved into the symbolic basement?

For some, chaos, disorganization, and harsh authority were visible while softness, beauty, and kindness were kept out of sight. For others, intrusion was hidden behind polite routines. Shame was buried under silence.

Every family creates an internal museum. We display what the collective ego can tolerate and push away what it cannot bear.

But the house remembers. So does the psyche.
Symptoms, dreams, and relationship patterns are often the return of what was pushed aside.

A Different Kind of Renovation

We live in a culture obsessed with dream homes, yet few ask what their home says about their inner world. Not in a design sense but as a reflection of our development.

Is there a room in your psyche you have refused to enter?
A light you have never turned on?
A hallway that feels haunted by something unspeakable?

This work is not about new furniture or trendy decor.
It is about psychic renovation and reclaiming the spaces we once had to leave behind.
It means walking through the house of the self, not escaping out the back door but moving through it room by room.

Even if the wallpaper is peeling.
Even if the ceiling leaks.

Coming Home

There is a vision I hold close.
Fluffy beds with clean sheets.
Walls that soothe.
A floor that supports the weight of my body.
Breath that comes easily.

I used to think that was just a fantasy. Now I see it as a symbol of integration, a psychological map that points us toward wholeness.

To come home to ourselves means reclaiming what we were conditioned to live without.
It means noticing the woodwork still hanging in the rafters and realizing it was always ours to claim.

We just have to look up.

#DreamWork #MarionWoodman #Psychoanalysis #SymbolicThinking #ChildhoodHomeHealing #TheInnerHouse #CarlJung