Abstract
The emergence of a collective identity, a complex social and psychological process, may be linked to a specific place and a particular urban layout. Architecture demarcates interior and exterior spaces that not only frame our relationships but can also generate a mirror image of the internal world. The authors examine relevant contributions from the sparse psychoanalytic literature on this subject, to support their hypothesis that changes to a city’s landscape, design, or architecture, when wholeheartedly embraced by its citizens, can serve to forge a new collective identity that helps to deal with absence, pain, and loss. They present the city of Bilbao, Spain, as a case study. This once thriving industrial city had collapsed into economic ruin, rife with social conflict, but since the 1990s, in an urban renewal, has emerged as a unique tourist destination. It has become a modern art and cultural center, symbolized by its most famous piece of contemporary architecture.
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Miguel Angel Gonzalez-Torres, M.D., Ph.D., Full Professor, Department of Neuroscience, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain.
Aranzazu Fernández-Rivas, M.D., Ph.D., Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Basurto University Hospital, Bilbao, Spain.
Address correspondence to Miguel Angel Gonzalez-Torres M.D., Ph.D., Psychiatry Service, Basurto University Hospital, Montevideo Avenida 18, Bilbao, Spain 48013.
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Gonzalez-Torres, M.A., Fernández-Rivas, A. Architecture, urban planning and collective identity: Bilbao as a case study. Am J Psychoanal 80, 383–394 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-020-09265-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-020-09265-9