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Social Science & Medicine

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed

Place identity, autobiographical memory and life path trajectories: The

development of a place-time-identity model
Charis Lengena,b,∗, Christian Timma, Thomas Kistemanna
a
University of Bonn, Institute for Hygiene & Public Health, GeoHealth Centre, Sigmund-Freud-Straße 25, D-53105, Bonn, Germany
b
Praxis Kairou, Dr. med. Dr. sc. nat. Charis Lengen, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist FMH, Florastrasse 12, CH-8008, Zurich, Switzerland

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The ability to remember, recognize and reconstruct places is a key component of episodic autobiographical
Place identity memory. In this respect, place forms an essential basis for the unfolding of experiences in memory and imagi-
Self nation. The autobiographical memory is seen to contribute to a sense of self and place identity.
Mental health The aim of this study was to concertedly analyze paintings, autobiographical narrations and places of birth
Episodic autobiographical memory
and life of clients under treatment at a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland who were manifesting psychiatric dis-
Trajectory
Time geography
orders, e.g. depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, substance dependence, and
dementia.
Each client exhibited distinctive attitudes and approaches towards life characterized by unique personal
mental constructs for living in given places of time episodes that worked towards shaping the development of
their identities as well as the development of their health. For these clients, place and time function together to
leave a mark, a trajectory, that can hinder or help the resolution of a psychiatric condition. Based on six re-
presentative cases, we illustrate how each painting, each biographical narration and each interview reveals
deeper structures of individual perception, emotions, feelings, coping strategies, and capacities to reflect and
identify with place-time trajectories.
Based on this analysis, a place-time-identity model has been developed, which emphasizes the importance of
narration, the structure of personality, and emotional experiences in the development of the ‘relay station’ of
episodic autobiographical memory, self and autonoetic consciousness: these three elements are not only con-
nected through their embeddedness in time, but also through their embeddedness in place. In this context, place
provides an external fundus of memory, capable of supporting humans in healthy recollection and remembering.
The process of placing appears to contribute to the creation of self-esteem and identity. This psycho-geographical
place-life-time approach is contrasted to phenomenological place-space-time theories of Husserl, Heidegger,
Bachelard, and Sloterdijk.

1. Introduction
Characteristics of identity associated with the perception and com-
prehension of the spatial environment are often summarized in the term
‘place identity’ (Proshansky et al., 1983; Lengen, 2016). Proshansky
et al. (1983) assumed place as an external memory of the place-based
aspects of our identity. Place identity is a construction of the self in its
spatial environment and reflects its socio-cultural relationship to place
and environment. Accordingly, place identity connotes both a self-re-
flective and an autobiographical perspective based on the auto-
biographical memory.
The autobiographical ‘context’ memory (Steinvorth et al., 2005) is a
multimodal and complex form of encoding, remembering and reliving
the context and experiences of one's own biography (Markowitsch and
Staniloiu, 2011). This context memory contributes to a sense of self as
well as to the content and continuity of identity (Addis and Tippett,
2008). The ability to encode, recall and reconstruct landmarks, scenes,
landscapes and places is a key element within episodic forms of auto-
biographical memory (Moscovitch et al., 2005).
This study is focused on the neuroscientific approaches of auto-
biographical memory, self and autonoetic consciousness concerning
place identity and their significance for mental health. Based on auto-
biographical memory approaches by Markowitsch and Staniloiu
(2011), Addis and Tippett (2008), Moscovitch et al. (2005), Damasio
(1999) and on the neuroscientific place identity approach of Lengen
and Kistemann (2012), as well as based on our ongoing qualitative

∗
Corresponding author. Florastrasse 12, CH-8008, Zurich, Switzerland.
E-mail address: charis.lengen@bluewin.ch (C. Lengen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.09.039
Received 31 January 2018; Received in revised form 23 August 2018; Accepted 20 September 2018
0277-9536/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Lengen, C., Social Science & Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.09.039
C. Lengen et al.
Fig. 1. EAM, autonoetic consciousness and the self (proto-, core- and extended self, Panksepp, 1998, Damasio, 1999).
mental health and place identity study, we aim at constructing a place-
time-identity model which enlarges the model of episodic auto-
biographical memory (EAM), self and autonoetic consciousness
(Markowitsch and Staniloiu, 2011): EAM, self and autonoetic con-
sciousness are not only connected by ‘embeddedness in time’ (Fig. 1),
but also by ‘embeddedness in place’.
The aim of developing a place-time-identity model is to develop a
more general model as a theoretical basis for neurosciences and medical
geography to better understand which factors could play an important
role in place-time-identity experiences. Consequently, the place-time-
identity model could be a basis for a discourse in the psychotherapeutic
landscape. Since the beginning of the 20th century, ego-centred and
ego-others-centred dyadic psychotherapeutic approaches have been
prominent (see Erikson, 1966; Freud, 1915; Winnicott, 1953). How-
ever, there are also authors such as Bronfenbrenner (1979), Cobb
(1977), Gebhard and Kistemann (2016) and Proshansky et al. (1983)
who are aware of the relationship between the individual and the en-
vironment. The development of our place-time-identity model echoes
the theoretical framework of the individual-environment-interaction in
‘the Ecology of Human Development’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and ‘the
Ecology of Imagination in Childhood’ (Cobb, 1977). However, in
medical geography, time as a factor in place identity has not been
deeply discussed so far, and in neuroscience the place factor is not
adequately considered concerning memory, self and consciousness.
Ultimately the individual-environment-interaction approach of the
place-time-identity model can be applied in psychotherapeutic work to
better understand human experience and context in life crisis.
For our research, we decided to recruit individuals experiencing a
mental health crisis rather than healthy individuals. In their neurolo-
gical work, Damasio (1999) and Sacks (2010) show how neurologic
disorders may reveal new approaches to healing: where pathological
processes happen—for example, a stroke in a specific brain area—and
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clinical symptoms such as amnesia, aphasia and/or paresis are pre-
sented, we can combine and correlate the symptoms with the patho-
logical brain process and learn which neurobiological processes are
involved in language and motion. The corresponding logic is the same
in research of mental disorders: where experiences on a cognitive,
emotional and behavioral level change, we can obtain new information
and knowledge out of the order revealed in a pathological process.
The introduction provides an overview of the state–of–the–art re-
ferences to neuroscientific approaches regarding episodic auto-
biographical memory, self and consciousness, and relates them to
phenomenological approaches to space, place and self. Based on an
inductive qualitative coding process (Strauss and Corbin, 1990) of
narratives of clients with mental-health problems, and a time–-
geography approach (Hägerstrand, 1970), we visualize the life paths of
each client in a time-geography model. Based on their autobiographical
narratives, we analyze and interpret their individual life movement
patterns.
1.1. Autobiographical memory, autonoetic consciousness, and the self
Both episodic and semantic components of the autobiographical
memory generate the material for the content and continuity of identity
(Kopelman et al., 1990). Personal episodic memory, the event-related
characteristic of autobiographical memory, supports the process of
encoding and remembering of ‘personally experienced events including
the contextual information about time and place. The retrieval of rich
details provides a sense of re-experiencing that involves mental
time–travel of the self,’ (Addis and Tippett, 2008, p. 73). Personal
episodic memory must be distinguished from personal semantic
memory which is not event-related, and which is connected with a
‘feeling of knowing’ instead of remembering (Addis and Tippett, 2008;
Schwartz et al., 2014). Autobiographical memory is a condition,
C. Lengen et al.
functioning as a type of relay station for the construction and emer-
gence of the self and the autonoetic consciousness.
‘The sense of a unified and continuous self is, therefore, based on an
illusion, where the self is a fictional entity, a mental model that we
unconsciously and unintentionally construct through the stories we tell
to others and to ourselves’ (Sani, 2008, p. 2). This sense of sameness
and continuity of self enables a connection between the past and the
future. Without a ‘sense of permanence’ it would be hard to integrally
preserve personal identity. As the sense of permanence itself is based on
autobiographical episodic memory, this sense of permanence appears to
be a construct of future thinking as well as a recollection of the past.
Nelson and Fivush (2004) and Markowitsch and Staniloiu (2011) sup-
port the thesis of the effect of the relationship between the EAM and the
creation and articulation of self-narratives, individual self-constructs
and self-concepts. Additionally, the development of the sense of self is
related to the development of the EAM during childhood and adoles-
cence. This development of the EAM is correspondingly based on in-
herent abilities of autonoetic ‘experiencing self’, ‘remembrance’ fea-
tures, the capacity to flexibly travel in mental time and space, and a
superior awareness of oneself as a person in a social (and biological)
environment.
The general ability to recall and imagine the future is called au-
tonoetic consciousness (Tulving, 2005), an important component of
self-identity (Arnold et al., 2011). ‘Individuals with (autonoetic) epi-
sodic memory can, if the situation calls for it, think here and now about
personal happenings in other places and other times’ (Tulving, 2005, p.
7). Space and place characteristics have the same impact on the epi-
sodic memory as time aspects. The concept of the relationship between
EAM and the development of the self (Nelson and Fivush, 2004) along
with the notion of EAM as embedded in both time and place (Tulving's
revision of EAM (Tulving, 2005)) emphasize the ‘important contribu-
tion of the socio-cultural milieu to the emergence of EAM’ (Fig. 1,
Markowitsch and Staniloiu, 2011, p. 25).
1.2. Self and consciousness in relation to philosophical approaches of place
Our epistemological focus on EAM, the self and autonoetic con-
sciousness in the context of sense of place and place identity intends to
merge neuroscientific concepts of self with hermeneutical concepts of
space/place and phenomenological concepts of the self in time and
space/place.
German and French scholars have made substantial contributions to
a philosophy of space and self. Phenomenologically-colored philoso-
phies (Husserl, 1973; Heidegger, 1927), and subsequent psychiatric-
therapeutical concepts (Jaspers, 1959), as well as Sloterdijk's (1998,
2004) ‘Sphärologie’ provide thoroughly elaborated representations of
space/place-, body- and self-experience (‘Raum-‘, ‘Leib-‘ and ‘Selb-
sterleben’) and complement neuroscientific approaches; the new
German term ‘Raumselbst’ (Space-Self) emblematically points to this
discourse (Sloterdijk, 2004). Following Husserl's (1973) phenomen-
ological approach (consciousness not separated from the outside
world), consciousness is not understood as a sphere isolated from ob-
jects where ideas are contained in an inner world; instead, these are
rather a consciousness of something. The individual does not stand vis-
à-vis the world (subject-object-dichotomy), but is embedded in the
world—in bodily, social, epochal and cultural relationships.
From birth, the experience and development of identity and self are
both collectively and individually anchored in the relationship to places
and landscapes, especially in the topophilic experience of living in a
home or house: ‘I am the space where I am’ (Bachelard, 1957), with
each place and object having a symbolic meaning. Yet, experiences of
rootlessness (Relph, 1976), homelessness and ‘placelessness’ (‘Ortslo-
sigkeit’, Lengen, 2016) contribute to identity and self. Individuals,
groups and societies build and create their self and self-consciousness
through experiences of being ‘inside’, being within as being-in-the-
world (‘Dasein’ as ‘In-der-Welt-sein’) (Heidegger, 1927) or ‘outside’, as
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emphasized in Sloterdjik's (1998) and Müller's (2017) criticism on
Heidegger's (1927) failure to address being outside as being-out-of-the-
world (‘Draussen-sein’ as ‘Aus-der-Welt-sein’). Sloterdijk's (1998) term
‘human as a dividuum’ aims at distinguishing between a phenomen-
ological inside space (‘Innenraum’) and outside space (‘Aussenraum’)
(‘insideness’ and ‘outsideness’ using terms highlighted by Relph, 1976).
The experience of being excluded from the world of inside space as
well as the crossing of borders are fundamental experiences which
create and endow self and identity. Bachelard (1957) quoted Sartre
(1975) writing on Baudelaire, using the quotation to allegorize the re-
lationship between space/place and being, using the quotation to al-
legorize the relationship between space/place and being: ‘(Emily) had
been playing house in a corner right at the bow of the ship … tired of
this game, she walked aimlessly towards the stern, when suddenly she
was struck by the dazzling thought that she was she … ’ This flash of
insight—of having a self—that the child experiences only arises after
the child has left her ‘home’. Bachelard points out that the child dis-
covers that she is ‘herself’ as she moves from being at home to being
outside: this is un-heim-lich [unheimlich = eerie; Heim = home]. The
experience of being outside is traumatic and indelible; Sloterdijk (1993)
compared being outside with feelings of fear, panic, extemporaneity,
being devoid of refuge, eeriness—in contrast to positive self-experi-
ences of being familiar, intimate, grounded, and having refuge. The step
outside is both a waking-up and a self-experience. The physical and
conceptual act of being outside or inside, of crossing borders, presents a
challenge and an opportunity to create self and identity (Lengen, 2016).
The feeling of being inside—to identify with, to experience the feeling
of sameness—as well as the feeling of being outside—excluded, root-
less, and different—cannot be detached from time and place: they are
both intensively, spatially encoded, learned, recalled and experienced
(Relph, 1976; Sloterdijk, 1993). Such feelings can give us a sense of
identity and trust; paradoxically, they can give rise as well to feelings of
alienation, all of which impact mental health. On the one hand, an
unknown, unfamiliar place or a place associated with trauma can
trigger anxiety, insecurity, unpleasantness, sickness and distress in in-
dividuals. On the other hand, as a function of the experiences in an
original place, a new place can be a positive challenge: a change in life
providing an opportunity to find the self, to develop a deeper self-
consciousness, to experience well-being amidst mental and physical
tension, and to find relaxation and health (Lengen, 2016).
1.3. Time geography
Hägerstrand (1970) and later on Schærström (1996), Lenntorp
(2004), and Sunnqvist et al. (2007) analyzed the changeability and
dynamics of daily life, visualizing life paths in time-space graphics
based on the concept of time-geography. Facing methodical problems in
geography with large scale aggregated data, Hägerstrand (1970) pre-
sented a method of analyzing the micro-situation of the individual and
the micro-environmental factors that are important for decision
making, e.g. with regard to moving, daily work, or visualization of life
paths.
To introduce our methodical approach, we elucidate three specific
terms of time-geography nomenclature (trajectory, path and prism)
used to analyze the life paths and the underlying decisions. Within
time-space, the path of an individual starts at the point of birth and
ends at the point of death. The life path—or parts of it—can be gra-
phically depicted as a two-dimensional trajectory derived from a four-
dimensional time-space pattern. A path can be a symbol of a physical
body which can be represented within a trajectory (Hägerstrand, 1970;
Schærström, 1996; Lenntorp, 2004). Other representations of life paths,
e.g. episodic autobiographical memories of time-spatial (or time-place)
characteristics, can also be illustrated as trajectories and prisms that are
continuous, indivisible, and have a positive direction along the time
axis.
The prism describes a time-space within which trajectories progress
C. Lengen et al. Social Science & Medicine xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Fig. 2. a–f: Autobiographical outlines.

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Fig. 3. a–f: Essences of interviews.

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C. Lengen et al.
Fig. 4. Life path of Client 1.
based on specific constraints: personal, social, cultural, biological and
environmental. The prism focuses on these constraints rather than the
behavior per se, enabling a broader analytical focus of time-geography.
Analogous to a molecular paradigm in the natural sciences, this time-
geographical method embraces changes and dynamics in life; funda-
mental rules that shape an individual's life, a society and its possible
transformation; and fundamental ecological and social conditions and
processes (Lenntrop, 2004, p. 223).
This closer time-geographical look at the individual human being in
a situational setting enables a deeper understanding of human social,
cultural, and environmental interactions; this perspective also allows a
mapping of the individual's time-space pattern distinct to their per-
sonality. For example, Sunnqvist et al. (2007) analyzed life charts of
psychiatric patients who systematically described their life courses and
life events over time; this combination of theoretical, empirical and
daily-life information and communication in research gave rise to a
‘user-centred spatio-temporal theory’. Analyzing and visualizing the
deeper relationships of an individual with others within a culturally
engraved milieu in a continuous time-space gives depth and perspective
(Gibson, 1986).
2. Methods
Our study was carried out in a residential private psychiatric clinic
for adults that operates under public contract in the rural surroundings
of Zurich (see Lengen, 2015). Ethical authorization was received from
the Ethics Committee of Psychiatry, Neurology and Neurosurgery of the
Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. Clients with acute psychotic disturbance
or with severe dementia, as well as patients in danger of harming
themselves or becoming violent vis-a-vis others, were not considered as
participants in the study, nor were clients with terrifying past experi-
ences or those for whom an interview might trigger panic attacks, re-
peated traumatization or dissociative episodes.
According to their diagnoses and personal life histories twenty adult
clients aged 23–59 years were invited to participate in the research
project. The participants were informed about the research project, they
gave their consent and were consistently informed that they had the
option of withdrawing from the study at any time. They originally came
from three separate continents: Africa (Morocco), Europe (Belgium,
Denmark, Germany, Switzerland) and North America (USA). Most of
the clients had been mentally ill for between two to three months. Their
main diagnoses were as follows: dementia, substance dependence,
major depression, bipolar affective disorders, anxiety disorders, soma-
tization and pain disorder, personality disorders, self-harming.
Interviews were carried out at the end of clinical stay, at which time the
symptoms of the clients’ main diagnoses were in abeyance. The parti-
cipants knew the researcher as a therapist; this made it possible to get
an informational in-depth interview. With patients developing greater
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confidence over the course of the psychotherapeutic process, we could
generate more personal information. The data collection of the twenty
participants comprised paintings, interviews and socio-biographical
anamnesis. However, for the work presented here it was impossible to
include all twenty clients because of the volume of the data.
Accordingly, we selected six representative clients based on the fol-
lowing criteria: (i) a broad range of mental disorders between stress-
related depressive disease (I12) and heavy manic episode of a bipolar
affective disorder (I14) or borderline psychosis with heavy suicidal
tendency (I4); (ii) diversity of places and times; and (iii) the cognitive
condition of the clients: how clearly and meaningfully they were able to
narrate.
Painting and interviewing were carried out in a simply arranged
room (see Lengen, 2015). The participants were familiar with doing
artwork since they had used it in therapy. The clients were prepared for
their place imagination by a simple breathing and body-centred medi-
tation based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction method of Jon
Kabat-Zinn (see Lengen, 2015), which they were familiar with. In this
moment of relaxation, the participants were asked without further ex-
planation, ‘What is your place?’ (‘Was ist Ihr Ort?’). After 5–10 min of
meditation, the clients were invited to quietly paint their first associa-
tion in response to the place in question. After 20 min, their paintings
were qualitatively evaluated in a semi-structured, one-to-one interview
applying a psychoanalytical approach (for details, see Lengen, 2015).
The audio files were fully transcribed. The interview data as well as
the biographical data based on their CV, the socio-biographical ana-
mnesis and medical reports were analyzed using an open coding process
(Strauss and Corbin, 1990). In this comparative line-by-line analysis,
the data were coded in as many ways as possible and memos were
written about the conceptual and theoretical ideas that emerged during
the course of analysis. Essential terms and sentences were weighted by
their frequency, emphasis, surprise effect and reflective power, as well
as the authors’ knowledge and experience in the therapeutic process
concerning the client. The open coding process was completed by vi-
sualizing the essential uncovered terms in timeline-based interview
figures of each participant, as well as lifetime-based biographical fig-
ures of each participant (see Fig. 2a–f and 3a-f).
Referring to the time geography approach of Hägerstrand (1970),
Lenntorp (2004) and Sunnqvist et al. (2007), residential types and
biographic place models were created (see Figs. 4–9). To visualize the
biographical life paths, all concretely mentioned locations regarding
place information were extracted from the interviews, the CVs and the
socio-biographical anamnesis using the QRA software Atlas.ti®.
Assuming that all mentioned places are of special importance, all
places were included. To distinguish between residential places and
places where the clients lived out their lives (‘other places’), an in-
ductive, qualitative codification and classification (Strauss and Corbin,
1990) for both types of places was done. Categories of residential places
(residence, former residence, birthplace) and categories of other places
(journey/voyage, trip/near residence, holiday spot, place of work,
professional journey, negative place, place with particular meaning)
were defined.
The place information was set into the individual biographical
context (duration of stay and period of residence) of each client: based
upon this, trajectories were constructed (Hägerstrand, 1970; Lenntrop,
2004). Residential places were rated and visualized as trajectories,
while the other places were rated as prisms and visualized similar to the
techniques set out in Hägerstrand (1970). The places were mapped in
Google Earth using the Atlas.ti® geocoding tool. Subsequently, the
geocoded places were exported to ArcMap® and ArcScene® (3D appli-
cation of ArcGIS®). The time information applicable to each place was
overwritten in the feature table. The life paths were visualized using the
extrusion and base height tool of ArcScene®. The z-axis indicates the age
of the individual person.
In the following section, we present the findings of the six selected
clients concerning their socio-biographical anamnesis, the interview,
C. Lengen et al. Social Science & Medicine xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Fig. 5. Life path of Client 2.

their paintings and their life path trajectories. In the discussion, we
present our place-time-identity model as an essence of the clients’
findings, neuroscientific memory and self-approaches and place iden-
tity literature. Additionally, we discuss five sub-themes based on the
place-time-identity model: (i) fault lines of personality, especially in-
and outsideness of the autobiographical memory; (ii) emotions and self;
(iii) latent biological, social, cultural and environmental structures of
place identity; (iv) the embeddedness of self in place and time; and (v)
the autobiographical place-time trajectories.
3. Findings
The in-depth portraitures of six clients reveal individual mental
structures of living in place and time, of developing identity, and of
developing individual health-illness continuities—embedded in their
individual life paths. Because the data collection is an intensive, in-
teractive process of the client and the therapist as researcher, it is dif-
ficult to differentiate which observations and interpretations are from
the client and which from the researcher. Whenever possible we mark
the interpretations and metaphors of the clients.

Fig. 6. Life path of Client 4.

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Fig. 7. Life path of Client 7.
3.1. Client 1
In her narrations and trajectory, Client 1 emphasized the impact of
her migration from Morocco to Switzerland (Fig. 4), the existing gap
and conflict between a traditional family idea in a modern world, and
the reality of a Swiss husband who didn't support her in her dream of
having her own family. From this conflict, she finds herself in an in-
secure mode—a ‘turtle in a ship’ (Fig. 10) (as she herself remarked)—an
expression of depression, pain disorder and anxiety (Fig. 2a). Further,
in reflecting her self, she desires and needs to be protected, to have
control, security and stability in view of strong depressive, fearful and
sad moods and behavior (Fig. 3a). Shame and infamy, derived from
feelings of violation by the husband and colleagues at work, and from
abandonment by the family of origin and the husband, are discernible
as emotions, perceptions, cognitions, projections, body sensations, and
personality traits of anxiety and dependence (see Figs. 3a and 16).
3.2. Client 2
As a consequence of paternal corporal punishment and, later on, of
fights with his classmates, Client 2 said that he had developed a
Fig. 8. Life path of Client 12.
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protector instinct with the ability to be a good trouble-shooter and
caregiver for his family. But his intelligence and willingness to develop
himself in his professional life is at odds with this talent. The early
abuse as well as the resulting coping strategies resulted in a suscept-
ibility to mental disorders, first as somatization, later on as a depressive
development. His trajectory (Fig. 5) shows a widespread place-time-
pattern which is much more complex than the trajectories of Client 1
and 7. This trajectory shows his restless life, his not-being-at-home, but
also his mental, physical, socio-economic capacity to travel and shape
his life in different ways. Interestingly, he described more than one
imaginary scenic place: a good-time landscape with green meadows and
blue lakes; a bad-time landscape with a night-moon landscape; and a
peace-calmness-relaxation landscape incorporating a savannah land-
scape with pastel shades (Fig. 11), indicating a desire for peace,
calmness, a chance to breathe, and a view into the distance (Fig. 3b)—a
compensation for his painful experiences.
3.3. Client 4
Client 4 shows a similar widespread and diverse trajectory (Fig. 6):
she told us that she had experienced abuse in her early childhood with
C. Lengen et al. Social Science & Medicine xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Fig. 9. Life path of Client 14.

little protection and security from her parents; her mother suffered from
a recurrent major depressive disorder (Fig. 2c). In this familial context,
Client 4 developed a mental disorder with personality disorder and
major depression as well as obsessive thinking and thoughts of suicide
earlier in her life than Clients 1, 2, 7 and 12. But similar to Clients 2 and
7, she is someone with the capacity and creativity to construct and
control places—in her case as an architect as she reflected herself. The
difficulty of bringing her wide interests, needs and wishes together was
a big challenge, especially concerning her motherhood and work as an
architect.

3.4. Client 7

Fig. 10. Painting of Client 1.
Client 7 also grew up together with a mentally ill mother who suf-
fered from paranoid schizophrenia (Fig. 2d). As a child, Client 7 de-
veloped both a maternal outlook for and dependence on her mother.
Based on her musicality, Client 7 grasped the opportunity to develop
her autonomy. However, her needs of dependence and autonomy were
at odds with one another: it was problematic to find a job or to stay in a
job because she was so homesick. She developed a morbid compulsive
yearning for her mother. Her trajectory is not diversified; it is a map of
the dependence on her mother and the effort to find a job. Unable to
sustain this conflict within herself, she became exhausted, tired and
depressive.

3.5. Client 12

Hiking in the mountains for Client 12 was an important part of his

Fig. 11. Painting of Client 2.
life from early on. However, pressured by his father, he became an
overachiever both in the mountains, at school and later on in his work,
with a remote sense of anxiety always present (Fig. 2e) as he reflected
himself. His overachievement is presumably a compensation for a lack
of sensitivity in his family of origin. Amidst this overachievement and
perfectionism, he failed to seize important relationship moments with
either of his parents: this made him depressive. He told us that he
realized that travel is his opportunity to gain new perspectives, which is
one reason why he was keen on traveling far away as well as on hiking
in the Swiss mountains. However, he has resided solely in one region
since his childhood. This gives both his life and self a path as well as
continuity. In this sense, his trajectory may be represented as a symbol
of himself: he spreads his wings like a free butterfly with a stable body
in the middle (Fig. 8). In comparison to the other clients, Client 12 was
the healthiest and most stable patient in the sample.

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birds in the sky. He said that this harmony allows him to relax and feel
free, calm and peaceful. He told us that the associated landscape is a
symbol of being himself when he is in a healthy mode. Client 14 is
strongly connected with environmental elements; during times of
mania, he seeks solitude at Mediterranean places and connects in a
psychotic way with these places: developing a sense of belonging,
connection to and deep dependence on sunny places, such as Nice in
France (Fig. 3f). During times of depression, he related that he ulti-
mately finds himself unable to get out of bed and feels like he is im-
prisoned, lost and rootless. He does not like solitude, but he cannot
stand anything, anybody, or anyplace. He was sad to have left his home
where he knew every place, all his neighbors, his street, his shop, his
bench near the church; he also missed his wife and his daughter. His
trajectory is characterized by a stay in San Francisco where he felt so
well in the multicultural society of the U.S. west coast.

4. Discussion

Fig. 12. Painting of Client 4. 4.1. Outline: a place-time-identity model

Based on the EAM, autonoetic consciousness and self model of

Fig. 13. Painting of Client 7.
Fig. 14. Painting of Client 12.
3.6. Client 14
The ups and downs of Client 14, his manic and depressive moods,
give rise to his need and desire for a meadow with a mountain, a tree
and warm sunshine (Fig. 15). The only movement is indicated by the
Markowitsch and Staniloiu (2011), and the self concept of Damasio
(1999) and Panksepp (1998), as well as our sense of place and place
identity model (Lengen and Kistemann, 2012), we propose a place-
time-identity model which is complemented by the presented com-
ments of the clients in the interviews and their socio-biography
(Fig. 16). This model is constructed on the relay station EAM: self and
autonoetic consciousness as a place-time-identity moment which is in-
fluenced by individual aspects, e.g. perception; attention; emotions;
encoding and recollection; feelings of knowing; sense of place; per-
sonality structures; spirituality; narratives from the individual; and
other factors (the inner circle of the model, see Fig. 16). Non-individual
aspects play a role as well: relationships in the dyadic and triadic family
structures; broader social relationships (teacher, classmates, friends,
institutions); socio-economic factors; cultural scripts of art, technology,
science, philosophy and religion; natural environmental aspects of
place; and biological factors of the individual such as age, gender, ge-
netic and epigenetic factors (the outer circle of the model, Fig. 16). All
these characteristics are connected and play an important role in the
moment of remembering and being in place and time. The life path
trajectories are latent, unconscious structures of an autobiographical
remembering process incorporating spatiotemporal characteristics of
experiences.
Environmentally relayed components (cognitions, ideas, values,
preferences, needs, desires, feelings, emotions), as well as behavioral
concepts and experiences of an individual play a role (i) in the re-
membrance of the ‘environmental’ past (Rubin, 1995); (ii) the imaging
of future ‘context’ (Addis and Tippett, 2008); and (iii) in moments of
mindfulness in the presence of the individual: this was observed in the
interviews with the clients. The past is based on place and space and
their characteristics in a biological, psychological, social and cultural
sense (see Fig. 16 and Proshansky et al., 1983); this multi-faceted sense
is encoded in the episodic autobiographical memory.
The episodic memories of place are a key element in influencing the
formation of early and subsequent identity, and relationship of self to
place and space. The place-time-identity model must be understood as a
continuity of identity from the moment of childhood, which Cobb
(1977) called the child's ecological sense of continuity with nature. This
sense of permanence (Sani, 2008) based on the EAM enables a con-
nection between the past and the future within the here and now. A part
of this sense of permanence is manifested in the life path trajectories
which are figures of the unconscious part of the place identity con-
tinuity. Cobb (1977) postulated that ‘human identity depends, there-
fore, on a sense of both discontinuity and continuity with nature as
history. Testing of the self against bounded and the unbounded begins
with the spatiotemporal relations of mother and child and continues

10
C. Lengen et al.
Fig. 15. Painting of Client 14.
Fig. 16. Adjusted place-time-identity model.
into play and the iconography of play art’ (Cobb, 1977, p. 37). A young
child's mind is based on an inner awareness: this inner awareness en-
compasses a preverbal method of knowing with the body within a
spatiotemporal socio-cultural context; this may be viewed as primary
layers or levels of mind. In this regard, the experience of the body in-
cluding motion, rhythmical patterns and continuity, vibrations and
action via sing-song, standing up, or falling down give a structure for
boundaries and sequences in time and place from a sensory point of
view. In this context, Cobb (1977) cited Charles Herrick with ‘Motility
is the cradle of the mind’ (Cobb, 1977, p. 40), whereas Gesell (1945)
found the development of genius as a continuity from the beginning and
interpreted this as a growth phenomenon; Cobb (1977, p. 44) defined
‘genius as an evolutionary phenomenon’, that took place ‘at biocultural
levels, beginning with the natural genius of childhood and the spirit of
place’.
Identity processes are not harmonious and well-balanced. The needs
and desires of our clients were only satisfied gradually and through
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variation depending on their personality (Singer and Salovey, 1993).
Additionally, physical settings vary in time and do not always fit to
individual needs and desires, e.g. Client 14 with his experience of re-
turning from San Francisco back to Zurich and feeling as an alien in his
own country. New individual and collective values, habits, feelings and
motives concerning the physical environment develop in a process of
adaptation: this constitutes and integrates the place identity of an in-
dividual (Lengen, 2016). Additionally, ‘the others’ play an important
role in place experience throughout life (see all clients). Thus, place
identity is also a function of what ‘the others’ think, do and say about a
physical setting. Accordingly, external (‘fremd’) and internal (‘eigen’)
narrations about place, location, and the sense of place experiences give
meaning (Lengen, 2016).
We present a contrast to the idea that place identity represents a
coherent, integrated cognitive substructure of ‘self identity’: our ap-
proach is that of a ‘potpourri’ consisting of episodic autobiographical
memories, interpretations, conceptual ideas and feelings identified with
specific physical settings and types of settings (Fig. 16). This potpourri
can be linked to a patchwork identity (Keupp et al., 2008) reflecting the
places lived in and experienced (Lengen, 2016). The characteristics of
place identity vary with gender, age, socioeconomic status and the
personality of the individual. This assembled notion of place identity is
a complex, cognitive-emotional structure characterized by ‘the emo-
tional bonds that people form with places … the cultural, historical and
spatial context within which meanings, values, and social interactions
are formed’ (Williams and Stewart, 1998, p.19).
Significant shifts in client identity may be prompted through in-
terior changes (the self) or in exterior changes (familial, social-cultural
or those of the physical environment) (Burris and Rempel, 2008).
Consequently, as revealed by the clients' narrations, patchwork iden-
tities are best understood as an ongoing process of identity construc-
tion; during any lived-out episode, old and new patches are woven
together by a pattern of articulations, both conscious and unconscious,
through narratives about the self, all based on episodic and semantic
autobiographical memories (Lengen, 2016). This memory-based iden-
tity construction provides ‘ontological security’—confidence borne
within the self as reflexively understood by the clients in terms of their
biography (Giddens, 1991, p. 53).
Concerning all these characteristics of the place-time-identity
model, we remember Bronfenbrenner's model of ‘The Ecology of
Human Development’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) which ‘can tell us how
those strange places and strange behaviors relate to the mundane
contexts we refer to as our everyday lives’ (p. ix). Both Bronfenbrenner's
(1979) and our model concern the relationship between the individual
and the environment. ‘Seen in different contexts, human nature, which I
had previously thought of as a singular noun, became plural and
pluralistic; for the different environments were producing discernible
differences, not only across but also within societies, in talent, tem-
perament, human relations, and particularly in the ways in which the
culture, or subculture, brought up its next generation. The process and
product of making human beings human clearly varied by place and
time’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Bronfenbrenner (1979) criticized the
absence of a broad individual-environmental-interaction perspective of
most psychological research; for him, this was investigation of ‘devel-
opment-out-of-context’. He postulated building context into the research
model in both theory and empirical work. He referred to ‘this evolving
scientific perspective as the ecology of human development’. In his
ecology of development, Bronfenbrenner (1979) focused in particular
on relationship by opening and widening the dyadic and triadic model
of the child-mother and child-mother-father relationship. Concerning
activities, roles and interrelationships of the developing person, he
construed different levels of interaction with the setting: from a nearer,
inner familiar level (the ‘microsystem’) to wider levels (the ‘meso-
system’) with interrelations among two broader systems, (i) the ‘exo-
system’ which affects the developing person without the person's help,
and (ii) the ‘macrosystem’, containing one or more systems ‘that exist,
C. Lengen et al.
or could exist, at the level of the subculture or the culture as a whole,
along with any belief systems or ideology underlying such con-
sistencies’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 25).
By contrast, the process of the individual experience in the in-
dividual-environmental-interaction is the focus of our model of place-
time-identity. With the focus on the autobiographical memory concept
of Markowitsch and Staniloiu (2011), and the self-concept of Damasio
(1999) and Panksepp (1998) of the individual, we analyzed the place
identity aspects of the clients in relationship: (i) to others (mother, fa-
ther, and other persons in the setting); and (ii) to the environment with
its biological, social and cultural characteristics in place and time. We
broaden the EAM, self and autonoetic consciousness approach with
characteristics in personality, perception, emotion, and behavior in the
psychological framework as well as narration, meanings and symbols in
a phenomenological way.
In the following sections, we discuss aspects of this model which are
developed based on neuroscientific and phenomenological approaches
as well as upon the answers of our clients to the question about their
place identity. Since the phenomenological approach more closely ap-
proximates the responses of the clients, we first present the discussion
of aspects of place encoding in childhood and the recollection effect,
along with fault lines in personality, especially the inside-outside-axis.
Afterwards, we consider the EAM, self and autonoetic consciousness
approach, i.e. the latent biological, cultural, social and environmental
structures of place identity, the embeddedness of self in time and place,
and autobiographical place time trajectories: the self as an EAM pot-
pourri.
4.2. Inside or outside: a fault line of personality
From assessing all the clients’ life stories, we observe that early
experiences in childhood are extremely important in the development
of the self, any flows of inner happiness as well as inner conflicts.
Autobiographical faults—intelligence and creativity versus parental
care (Clients 2, 4, 7), abuse versus protection and avoidance (Client 1),
perfection and performance versus recreation and fun (Clients 2, 4, 7,
and 12)—are also found in the autobiographical narrative of every
other client, each with his/her own distinctive coloring and personality.
A further fault line in the personalities of the clients is the inside-out-
side-axis.
The personality development of Client 2 and his movement pattern
from Belgium to numerous places in Europe (trajectories in Fig. 5) as
well as his socio-biographical comments (Fig. 2b), show that the ca-
pacity to travel brings Client 2 away from rootedness in existence
(‘Dasein’) as ‘being-in–the-world’ (Heidegger, 1927) to a ‘being outside
as being-out-of-the-world’ (Sloterdijk, 1998; Müller, 2017): this takes
the form of living in the role of a demanding and busy businessman
characterized by the power of abuse and not on the power of love. Si-
milarly, Client 1, who also moved but for reasons of emigration from
Morocco to Switzerland, endured a change from a traditional family
structure to an environment without extended relationships following a
marriage to a Swiss man. Subsequent to this move, Client 1 experienced
social exclusion and, post-divorce, also socio-economic margin-
alization.
In the sense of Bachelard (1957), Sloterdijk (1998, 2004) and Müller
(2017), Client 4 creates her inside space (‘Innenraum’) which symbolizes
her self in a phenomenological sense (her self-denoted space (‘Raum-
selbst’). Her impulse to paint herself as being within her secure apart-
ment (Fig. 12)—given that her first place association of standing at the
bottom of the mountain triggered a feeling of insecurity—shows how
she copes with insecurity through constructing her own place. Her fear
of expanses and her need for security and boundaries, paralleled with
her desire for unboundedness and wide-open views, became apparent in
her creative handling and control of place, as narrated in the interview.
Her self-destructive behavior can be understood symbolically as a
dysfunctional handling of boundaries within herself, in her interactions
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Social Science & Medicine xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
with others and with places. Her self-created and controlled boundaries
between inside space (‘Innenraum’) and outside space (‘Aussenraum’)
(Müller, 2017) are symbolic of her contact with herself. Her creativity
in constructing spaces and places is a source of power for her, but one
that paradoxically stands in conflict with her desire to be a good mother
and partner (professional work drawing her away from the responsi-
bilities of these roles); this ultimately is what leads her—like her mo-
ther before her—to fall into a deep depression after her child's birth
(Fig. 2c).
For Client 14, boundaries are likewise very important in the changes
occurring inside and outside. In crossing a border, he experiences both
fleeing himself as well as fleeing from himself. In remembering this, the
feeling of being uprooted, the feeling of losing himself comes up, with
the result that he was really sad in the interview, crying out ‘Yes! Your
question is my question! Where is my place?’
Once again, we observe the relationship between place and self both
in a phenomenological way such as Heidegger (1927) described as
being as in-the-world-being (‘Dasein’ as ‘In-der-Welt-sein’), as well as the
being outside as being outside of the world (‘Draussen-sein’ as ‘Aus-
der–Welt-sein’); these are the immanent phenomenological inside space
(‘Innenraum’) and outside space (‘Aussenraum’) (Sloterdijk, 1998;
Müller, 2017). As Client 14 crosses the border from ‘insideness’ to
‘outsideness’, driven by the inner conflicts of his self, he arrives at an
existential form of outsideness, one which ‘involves a self-conscious and
reflective uninvolvement, an alienation from people and places,
homelessness, a sense of the unreality of the world and of not be-
longing’ (Relph, 1976, p. 51). Finally, existential outsideness leads both
Client 4 and 14 to a disastrous state of extreme outsideness: they remain
in their beds and become increasingly suicidal. An open door, open to
escape this unendurable condition, turns out to be an illusion. Ac-
cordingly, the bedroom, traditionally a part of inside space (‘In-
nenraum’) turns into an outside space (‘Aussenraum’), something ex-
ternal, alien (‘fremd’) that increasingly symbolizes both the unreality of
being and being lost to themselves. In this condition, the self is no
longer connected with the context of being, e.g. with the place. Rather,
the nature of internal and external lose meaning; the differences be-
tween these opposites are dissolved. The boundaries between these two
components are essential to the healthy creation of identity. When we
are healthy–or intend to become healthy–time and place are essential
components, with an autonoetic consciousness giving rise to the de-
velopment of the self in both place and time as well as in relationship to
others, in the creation of an ongoing identity (Proshansky et al., 1983).
4.3. Autobiographical memory, emotions and self
Each of the clients has developed an individual place-time-identity
based on the EAM, their development and creation of self, their au-
tonoetic consciousness as well as unconsciousness in place and time.
During the entirety of their lives, they create and form their relationship
to the environment by living out and narrating to themselves and to
others their daily interactions and experiences (Bruner, 1991). Thus,
their narrative identity is not only the narration of a biography, but also
a fundamental mode of social construction and reality (Keupp et al.,
2008). Through narration, place identity is consistently recalled, re-
membered and reconstructed: for example, Client 7 may reinvent her
self by narration when she stands by a lake and remembers her child-
hood. Her place and her autobiographical memories are deeply con-
nected and coherent through language. In this sense, Sarbin (1983)
postulated a sense of belonging and place through a symbolic process of
‘emplotment’: a form of self-creation in which the person-place-re-
lationship is transformed into a plausible self-narration; this is ob-
servable in each of the clients' interviews. This process happens on a
daily basis, whenever we tell one another what we do, where and at
which time. However, the narratives which are based on episodic au-
tobiographical memory from childhood to the present incorporate
much unconscious content. Most of the clients reported that they didn't
C. Lengen et al.
think that place would be so important for them. All clients have strong
EAMs from childhood.
4.3.1. Early experiences of childhood
The strong contrast between being intensively connected with
places or not being connected at all is a fault line in the autobiography
of Client 14 based on childhood experiences. From early childhood
onwards, he felt undesired and unwelcomed by his parents (Fig. 2f);
this gave rise to the question of being or not being, and of having or not
having a home. Such observations have been described and discussed
over a century of psychoanalytic literature, as well as in more recent
psychotherapeutic and psychological literature. For instance, Winnicott
(1971) concluded 'Home is where we start from'. For Client 14, when in
a healthy mode later on, an intensive feeling of being connected to his
former residence was triggered and strengthened through his episodic
autobiographical memories of being together with his daughter and ex-
wife at special places. This feeling of knowing, deeply related with re-
calling and remembering the past (Schwartz et al., 2014; Addis and
Tippett, 2008; Rubin, 1995), creates a sense of home, what we would
denote as a sense of place and place identity (Lengen and Kistemann,
2012). The unconscious latent time and place structure of this EAM-
based place identity embodies the place time trajectory of each in-
dividual. Correspondingly, early experiences of childhood are im-
portant in the development of self and a sense of place.
Emotions, affect and feelings are continuously involved within the
encoding and remembering process of place and environment, episodic
autobiographical memory, autonoetic consciousness and self. Both
‘basic emotions’ and ‘background feelings’ are differentiated and are
subject to their own biological and cultural development (Damasio,
1999). ‘Basic emotions may include fear, anger, sadness, disgust, sur-
prise, or happiness, while ‘background feelings’ may include fatigue,
energy, excitement, well-being, sickness, tension, relaxation, sudden
change, reluctance, stability, instability, balance, imbalance, harmony,
and discord. If we analyze the interviews and socio-biographic ana-
mnesis of the clients, many of these terms can be detected: Client 1
described her anxiety and painful sadness concerning her workplace,
with her instability and imbalance being symbolized as a ship at sea;
Client 2 and Client 4 were impressive in their dual presentation of
tension and relaxation in different landscapes; Client 14 had a great
need for harmony, balance and stability at Mediterranean places, and is
frequently in a manic or depressive imbalance–either sadness or hap-
piness.
Concerning the morbid relationship to her mother and the con-
sequences of this relationship concerning her work places, Client 7's
narrative underpins the importance of the emotional component and
how deeply emotions and meanings are connected to places. For Client
7, water is an important aspect in her emotions and life: for purposes of
health recovery, she likes to swim, to look out upon the expanse of
water. Water is for her a symbol of life (Fig. 3d): vivid in turbulence,
serene, supportive, capable of constant floating, diverse, varied in at-
mosphere as well as in colors and shapes (Lengen, 2015). Client 7 views
water as a metaphor of being profound and unlimited (Fig. 13), where
neither structure boundaries, nor limitations exist. The whole painting
is one of floating—an image of her personality and self.
4.3.2. Recollection and re-experiencing of emotions
Recollection of events, even upon involuntary recall, gave rise to the
reoccurrence of traumatic emotions. Client 1 narrated her experience of
recalling a traumatic event of bullying at her workplace in an affect-
loaded manner, and how she had strong emotions–bad, angry, sad, and
of disgust–when she took part in the exposition training as part of a
therapeutic intervention. When she recalled and imagined the situation
during the interview, similar emotions arose. Similarly, Client 4 had
dissociated reactions to traumatic events such as being defenseless
against chronic domestic abuse at the hands of a brother, as well as
against sexual assault by a stranger when she was 13 years old, and the
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Social Science & Medicine xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
absent support of her parents: all are involuntarily recalled and appear
to be ‘directly encoded and authentically re-experienced’ (Robinson,
1995, p. 204).
In the recollection process, significant emotion-arousing events are
more likely to be recalled than neutral everyday events (Lengen and
Kistemann, 2012). In particular, pleasant events are more readily re-
called than emotionally neutral events. Salience, pleasantness and
emotional involvement seem to be important in the encoding and re-
collection process (Linton, 1982; Arnold et al., 2011). Client 12 showed
such positive and pleasant memories regarding the interaction with his
grandfather and his own family, with the place of remembrance posi-
tively affect-loaded as part of this positive recollection. Similarly, Client
7 remembered distinctive and recurrent memories about the pond
above her native city. Emotion-arousing events not only play an im-
portant role in positive emotional judgment, but also in negative
judgment, in which, for example, emotionally negative and unpleasant
events, especially traumatic events in childhood, may have profound
effects on avoid-focused coping strategies as well as the development of
mental-health problems such as anxiety, depression or dissociative
disorders (Christianson and Safer, 1995). Most of the clients had emo-
tionally negative and unpleasant events in their childhood such as harsh
traditional education, corporal punishment, domestic abuse and sexual
assault, or emotional neglect, e.g. if one of the parents were ill or overly
absorbed by work.
However, complexity characterizes the interaction between emotion
and autobiographical memory. In real-life studies, negative emotions
and feelings are investigated more often than in clinical studies. Many
traumatized individuals show different emotion-based feelings, either
congruent to the to-be-remembered event, or incongruent—separated
and disrupted from the to-be-remembered event. Post-traumatic
symptoms such as neurotic anxieties (Client 4), anancasm, physiolo-
gical symptoms such as pain and sensorimotor symptoms without or-
ganic cause (Client 1 and Client 2) and dissociative symptoms (Client
4), make patients unable to recall events or central details, or even the
original emotion associated with the trauma (Freud, 1915; Singer,
1990).
In the context of these investigations of traumatic experiences, a
‘tunnel vision’ has been described, a narrowing of attention, emotion
and perception. Clients 1, 2, 4 and 14 described this tunnel vision
memory in that they remembered a ‘traumatic scene, at least tem-
porarily, as more focused spatially than the actual stimulus input and
more focused spatially than a comparable neutral scene’ (Safer et al.,
1998). Subjects remember neutral scenes as more wide-angled than the
actual stimulus input (Intraub et al., 1992). Attentional widening in
remembering neutral visual information might contribute to the rea-
sons why people generally like to look upon a wide landscape (Clients
2, 7, 12, 14). The mood of state-dependent effects and context-depen-
dent effects are important in the remembering process. If they return to
the ‘scene of the crime’, they could remember details that they do not
remember otherwise (Christianson and Safer, 1995). Information
learned and events encoded in one context are obviously more difficult
to recall in another context. Additionally, the mood of state-dependent
effects and mood congruence are important for the remembering pro-
cess.
Especially for traumatic experiences, the associated affect is often
unconscious and separated for individuals in a dissociative state:
sometimes they do not remember the content of the trauma and the
related affect to the trauma; sometimes if they return to the specific
place where the traumatic event happened, they feel very un-
comfortable (see Client 1) with somatic presentation as a preliminary
state of remembering a feeling or an idea with the same somatic irri-
tation as in the original traumatic process. Sometimes individuals re-
member fragments of traumatic details associated with unpleasant
feelings, but are unable to remember why they do not like these aspects
(Christianson and Safer, 1995): this highlights the existence of mood
state-dependent and context state-dependent effects in the episodic
C. Lengen et al.
autobiographical memory.
4.4. Latent biological, cultural, social and environmental structures of place
identity
The clients’ autobiographical data (socio-biographical anamnesis,
interviews) shows similar latent structures throughout their biological,
cultural, social and environmental framework. The clients presented a
development of social scripts from the family of origin, through edu-
cation in school and study, to job and career, as well as from the family
members to classmates, partnership, marriage, own family, and some-
times divorce and new family (Fig. 2a–f). Based on the autobiographical
memory, the self is multi-dimensionally constructed. The self develops
based on self-experiences and autobiographical memories from child-
hood which are embedded in the family of origin along the life line up
to and including the here and now (see Fig. 2a–f).
Family, society and culture were shown to influence the encoding
and recalling process. In particular, the maternal reminiscing style in
the familial context and embedded in the cultural context especially
influences the ‘child-rearing practices, the view of selfhood and past,
preferences for high arousal versus low arousal emotional states or
degree of attention to social context’ (Nelson and Fivush, 2004). This
aspect is analogous to Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ‘microsystem’. Peterson
et al. (2009) observed that Canadian children who spoke about re-
collections of their EAMs showed a more autonomous self-construal
style, while Chinese children showed a more relational one. Wang and
Conway (2004) observed differences between the Asian and American
societies and cultures in both the development of the continuity of self
through EAM and the social position of the self in relation to others:
interpersonal (Asian) rather than individualistic (Western) values in-
fluenced the self-definition of individuals with marked contrasts in the
historic developments in each of these societies (Nelson, 2008).
Social and cultural dimensions as well as biotic and abiotic en-
vironmental dimensions of self are comparable to Bronfenbrenner's
(1979) ‘macrosystem’. Each of these self-characteristics is embedded in
a larger ‘social community of minds’ (Nelson, 2008). In relationship
with the members of the community, the child develops an awareness
of the experiences and memories of others as distinct from the experi-
ences and memories of the self; this is observable in all clients. Ad-
ditionally, the child unconsciously inculcates the latent structures of the
social systems: those ethical and moral aspects of the society and cul-
ture into which it was born. Correspondingly, Client 1 unconsciously
felt the unspoken but lived out needs and desires of her family of origin,
as well as the traditional culture, beliefs and meanings of the Moroccan
culture of her birth. Similarly, Client 12, embedded in his Swiss family
in the social context of the Zurich region, absorbed the Swiss-Germanic
message that family members must be strong and stoic, not speaking
about difficulties.
Through the cultural and social scripts, the self emerges across time
and place. In this context, Tafarodi (2008, p. 31) asked ‘how the con-
cept of the person itself differs in its particulars across living societies
and how these differences color the self-consciousness of the individual
… The cultural construction of the person gives us the only I that we
can know through symbolic constitution.’ In his discussion of language
and the self, Cassirer (1953) noted that culture gives us the symbols to
develop the awareness of our self and our subjectivity. Narrations of life
history are deeply driven both culturally and personally, based on two
psychological processes: the recounting and interpretation of the nar-
rative itself and the retrieval of memories. Such autobiographical nar-
ratives are highly constructed, based on frames and scripts, and provide
a patchwork of telling and understanding (Bruner and Fleisher
Feldman, 1995).
Landscape plays a role in these narrations: Client 2's painting brings
to mind the concept of biophilia (Wilson, 1984)—the love and un-
conscious rootedness to savannah-like landscapes. Roszak (1992) as-
sumed that the deepest root of collusive madness in industrial society is
14
Social Science & Medicine xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
the repression of the ‘ecological unconsciousness’. Such images along
with a need for challenge in nature setting can be found in the narra-
tives of Client 12 as he relates searching out and traveling into land-
scape settings in the mountains of Switzerland and the French Alps, as
well as in Africa, North America, Russia and China (Fig. 8).
Early on in his childhood, Client 12 developed a strong sense of
relationship to settings of nature and landscapes, as well as to natural
objects—mountains, lakes, trees and birds. To be outdoors in nature
was to be together with his family—especially, in early childhood, with
his grandfather (Fig. 3e) who taught him much about fauna and flor-
a—giving rise to biophilia (Wilson, 1984). The smell of the forest, the
blue sky visible in the mountains, the shapes of rocks, and a tree
standing alone on farmland (Fig. 14) all symbolize power for him, as
well as calmness and relaxation.
4.5. The embeddedness of self in time and place
In the neuroscientific discourse (Lengen and Kistemann, 2012), the
temporal aspect of self has been insistently emphasized. In comparison
to Heidegger's (1927) philosophy as articulated in ‘Being and Time’,
neuroscience interprets the experienced present as a dynamic interplay
of past and future based on the EAM. Every moment of self-con-
sciousness is suffused with the sense of ‘being-in-time’ (Tafarodi, 2008).
In this temporal context, the act of remembrance takes place within
our culture: as children we learn to know the abstraction of time, spatial
visualizations on a time line or a clock are used which are encoded in
the semantic and, depending on the experience, in the episodic
memory. In this sense, time and place/space are also connected in our
mind.
In the EAM-based narrations of our clients, we found affect-loaded
narrations about place contents, as well as place-time correlations, with
especially larger episodes such as childhood, school time, or prominent
positive experiences such as marriage (Client 1, 2, 4, 12, 14), job suc-
cess (Client 2, 4, 12), concerts (Client 7), or negative experiences such
as divorce (Client 1, 2, 14), and job loss (Client 2, 7). Narrations about
these episodes are almost always correlated with episodic autobio-
graphic context memory, a new term in the research of trauma therapy
(Steinvorth et al., 2005). Client 2's narrations showed how time and
place are merged in the perception and symbolizing of self-meaning-
process through his experiences of the circadian rhythm: the experience
of sunrise and sunset is for him a symbol of his own metamorphosis as
he reflected himself. Yet, this metamorphosis is only possible in the
context of place and landscape. In discerning these findings of different
time comprehension in different cultures and individuals, we assume
that these cultural and individual variations also have an influence on
the symbolic meaning of time, on the EAM, as well as on self-con-
sciousness.
Tafarodi (2008) discussed this cultural and individual conditioning
of its phenomenal texture of the synchronic unity of the I: ‘First, the
normal experience of the I as familiar and known appears to depend on
the ‘position’ of self-consciousness in relation to past experience and
sustained intentions and objectives'. Any awareness of oneself thinking
and experiencing emerges against a dense background of paths and
trajectories that have led to the present moment. Equally woven into
this awareness are the vectors of desire, intention, anticipation, and
progressive action that point forward in time and are constantly en-
gaged. In other words, the ‘past and future are represented, however
vaguely, in any momentary synchronic unity of the self’ (Tafarodi,
2008, p. 35). Strawson (1997) posited ‘a bare locus of consciousness as
a ‘void of personality’. A pathological depersonalization, as Client 4
showed in her personality disorder, illustrates the disorientation of the
fragmented I in time and place from a familiar stable self. In this mo-
ment, the I is unconscious, segregated and without identity or a sense of
coherence. In any discussion about time, characteristics of space and
place can arise. Place and space approaches may provide a supple-
mentary explanation of a feeling of continuity of I through the own
C. Lengen et al.
autobiography from the past to present into the future—a sense of co-
herence in place and time.
In this context of synchronic coherence, Bachelard's (1957) per-
spective is fundamental: space and place is experienced, not only
measured by the geometer. In the experience of space and time, in-
dividuals code the space/place, encode spatial modalities of perception,
and then represent it in memory, based on imagination in different
times, time spaces and different places. In analogy to psychoanalysis,
Bachelard (1957) postulated the topo-analysis in which the systemic
psychological study of places of our inner life should be analyzed.
4.6. Autobiographical place time trajectories: the self as an EAM potpourri
The autobiographical-, object-, and context-based ‘place-time lines’
in the trajectories and narrations of the clients are strong personality
and self-identity constructors similar to the fault lines. Landscapes such
as the mood-related bad-time-landscapes and good-time-landscapes as
well as peace-calmness-relaxation-landscapes (Client 2, Fig. 11); a tree
(Client 2, 12, 14); the hill, meadow sun and birds (Client 14); the self-
constructed house and garden (Client 4); the mountains (Client 12) or
water (Client 1, 7)—are self-relevant objects and places which symbo-
lize different aspects of being in a ‘potpourri’ of EAMs, symbols,
meaning and feelings. It is a form of patchwork identity concerning the
lived places (Lengen, 2016), varying with gender, age, socioeconomic
status and the personality of the individual.
In the place time trajectories, the development of ‘essential aspects
of life’ (‘Lebensschwerpunkte’, Lengen, 2016) as well as the self are
visible. Each client has his/her own pattern of time-geographical tra-
jectory, like a skeleton of the self. The fault lines are often based on
abuse experienced during childhood and may influence the trajectories
and thus the movements in the place-time line. If we compare the
trajectories of the clients, the immigrants have more fragmentations in
their trajectory of residential places than the native Swiss clients. Ex-
emplary of this fragmentation is Client 7's intense need to return home
to her mother and the feelings she has while in the cathedral of her city;
these places and landscapes may, referencing Winnicott (1953), be seen
as forms of affect-loaded emblems which have a function as transitional
objects ‘preserving a person's sense of self, storing and cueing memories
and feelings that link people with their historical identity—their me of
days past’ (Burris and Rempel, 2008, p. 105).
In contrast to other studies that have applied time-geography to
visually explore and consider the individual space-time paths, e.g.
among persons with MHI (Vrotsou et al., 2017), this study used direct
observations and diaries for visualizing the trajectories of the auto-
biographical memories and narrations about places which were of
special importance and were recalled during the interview. Since
common time-geography studies often focus on the visualization of the
paths of intervention for persons with an illness, it is difficult to com-
pare the results of the two approaches. However, a comparison of the
individual life space-time paths was a helpful step in finding different
patterns of life paths. The time-geographical visualization based on
individual data (Sunnqvist et al., 2007; our study) both gives an over-
view of the large amount of personal data of this study and facilitates an
in-depth understanding of the overview through interactive visual ex-
ploration of observations and narration of life paths. The time-geo-
graphical exploration is also an orientation and foundation for the
generating hypothesis concerning complex individual-environmental
interacting systems considering place and time. Additionally, the
‘method of combining an interview with a time geographic life’ path
(Sunnqvist et al., 2007, p.250) gives an in-depth understanding of in-
dividual life paths, which we can use empirically, in theory as well as in
therapy. Similar to the patients in the studies of Sunnqvist et al. (2007)
that showed patients' satisfaction with this method of (i) visualizing life
course and life events in place and time; and (ii) learning from this
‘comprehensive and structured picture’ (Sunnqvist et al., 2007, p.250),
our clients were surprised about the relevance of understanding and
15
Social Science & Medicine xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
learning about spatial-temporal life aspects in relationship to context,
places, settings and the cultural, social and biological environment.
In our heavily scheduled post-modern era, characterized by ac-
celerated movements in space and time within what has come to be
known as the global village, the notion of ‘place’ is becoming fuzzy and
diffuse; we live in a complex individual-environmental interactive
system. Client 12 mentioned his own experiences: he has an affect of
fear, anger and disgust when recalling the main street of Zurich, where
people in suits (literally, the ‘Cravatteten’ or ‘tie-wearers’) hurry and
rush around. With these forms of ‘time-space-compressions’ (Massey,
1991), people are often unable to cope and consequently fall ill. In our
current era, we often move and frequently change places, we commu-
nicate via the internet and use digital social media in which physical
locations do not play a role. A new, virtual sense of place is developing.
It is unclear whether or not this new digital, ‘multilocal’ sense of place
has the same potential to create identity and self as the traditional sense
of place which people call home has. At this point in time, our pre-
dominantly western ideal of place, our idea of home, is contrasted with
and changed by the fragmentation and disruption of our globalized
world, exacerbated by new virtual informational communities that
continue to emerge (Massey, 1991). In view of the research underlying
this study, it would be interesting to analyze these arguably different
‘time-space-compressions’ or time-space-extensions which arise in the
mind based on the EAM in a time-geographical approach, in recognition
of the perception of place/space-time-distortion.
4.7. Limitations
One of the limitations of our study is the therapeutic experience of
the clients. They have learned to reflect themselves, especially through
talk therapy, schema therapy, stress reduction therapy and/or cognitive
behavioral therapy, social competition therapy, as well as occupational
therapy and active exercise therapy. Accordingly, the meditation,
paintings and narratives may have been biased through the conversa-
tion style present in all the different therapies, as well as the new
narratives about themselves. Additionally, the familiarity with doing
artwork may have influenced the research process in the way clients
were more confident and efficient in expressing their self in a painting
process. While this familiarity could support the data collection, it
could also bias the idea of a primary association and expression act
concerning the participants cognitions, emotions and behavior in the
investigation process.
Another limitation of the study is the researchers’ therapeutic re-
lationship with the clients. The trustworthy relationship between re-
searcher and clients provided an advantage of a consistent therapeutic
imprint over six to eight weeks that was based on a consistent interview
situation (see Bruner and Fleisher Feldman, 1995; Kearns and Collins,
2012; Lengen, 2015). As previously noted, the advantage of relation-
ship between the researcher as a therapist and the participants was the
multiplicity and depth of the answers and information from the inter-
views. A signal disadvantage is the bias in the interviewing and inter-
pretation process, which is shaped through the relationship and So-
cratic dialogue between participant and researcher-as-therapist. The
demand of objectivity in contrast to confidential personal data collec-
tion has to be deliberated both in this study as well as regarding the
qualitative approach as a whole. Our choice was to opt for richness in
data collection.
The study process was intuitive, based on a body-oriented, un-
conscious, pre-symbolic status concerning the introductory question for
their place via a painting-associated preverbal status which then moved
to an autonoetic conscious verbal narrative status. The body-oriented
meditation could also bias the outcome, especially regarding the im-
mediate association of their places which was often a landscape of re-
laxation.
Analyzing the transcripts of the clients in a representational way, we
advance to the patterning of autobiographical memory and how ‘such
C. Lengen et al.
patterning compresses, deletes, expands, and even selects specific in-
formation for retention, all indicating the work of ‘construction’’
(Linton, 1982). Whether such a construction is a ‘re-construction’ that
imposes losses or distortions on ‘real events’ or a ‘true chronology’ of
events need not concern us yet’ (Bruner and Fleisher Feldman, 1995, p.
292). The autobiographical memory pattern is not dominated by a
generalized narrative pattern, but it seems to be narratively formed
under the control of a ‘self-schema’ which has been developed based
both on successful life events and faults in the clients' self. Depending
on the activated self-schema while reflecting one's self bias in auto-
biographical memory, individuals create their own individually, so-
cially and culturally meaningful life stories. Notably, context-specific
individuals remember, reflect, consider and narrate their life stories
differently. Consequently, the clients might have narrated their stories
more negatively, as a result of their depressive experiences, or more
positively, as influenced by therapeutic progress and experiences, thus
being more relaxed and free.
5. Conclusions
In each picture, in each narration and story of each client's bio-
graphy and interview, we could find underlying structures of their in-
dividual perception, emotions, and feelings, as well as of their coping
strategies—their own capacity to reflect and to identify with their own
place-time and time-place pattern. There was evidence of development,
both cognitive, emotional and behavioral as well as systemic, from
childhood until the present; this development helped the individuals to
survive, to keep and transform their identity and self and associated
meanings, beliefs and needs based on personality, biological constitu-
tion, culture, society and physical environment.
Through this method of interpreting place, time and identity, a new
focus and perspective on interpreting time and place could be devel-
oped. Biographical narratives, pictures and medical records together
provide complementary material for comprehending the existential
questions concerning place and time in life more holistically, both
neuroscientifically and phenomenologically, which appears to align
more closely to the clients’ narratives. The ecological approach could be
a way of resolving the criticism against bringing neuroscientific and
phenomenological approaches together.
Based on our empirical material, we intended to create an in-
novative approach to psycho-geographical place-time comprehension,
combining and complementing existing place/space-time theories:
Cassirer's (1953) discussion of ‘mythic, aesthetic and theoretical space’;
Bachelard's (1957) ‘poetic of space’ in his dialectic of inside and out-
side; Sloterdijk's (1998) and Müller's (2017) Raumselbst; Heidegger's
(1927) sense of Dasein which is embedded in time and place and does
not exist without time and place; and Relph's (1976) comprehension of
place and sense of place. By doing so, we intended to contribute to a
better understanding of the geographical, philosophical, social, psy-
chological and neurobiological context in which we create and develop
our socio-psycho-autobiographical comprehension of place-time iden-
tity, based on the narratives, the behavior, cognition and emotions of
the clients, as well as on our self-reflection in the beings, relations and
movements of each individual in our postmodern, individualized so-
ciety.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Julia Föllmer for translating the figures.
For the language check we thank Jennifer Lew Schneider. A special
‘thank you’ goes to the clients.
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Glossary
Amnesia: loss of the ability to remember
Anancasm: any form of repetitious stereotyped behavior that, if prevented, results in
anxiety, obsessive compulsive behavior
Anxiety disorders: group of mental disorders characterized by significant feelings of an-
xiety and fear
Aphasia: an inability to comprehend and formulate language because of damage to spe-
cific brain regions
Aussenraum: outside space
Autonoetic consciousness: human ability to mental travel in the past, in the future or in
17
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counterfactual situations. It involves self-projection, episodic future thinking, mental
time travel, as well as self-awareness, allowing the rememberer to reflect on the
contents of episodic memory
Biophilia: bios = life, philia = love, tendency of humans to focus on and to affiliate with
nature and other life-forms, in part, a genetic basis
Bipolar affective disorders: known as manic depression, is a mental disorder that causes
periods of depression and periods of abnormal elevated mood
Coreself: emergent process, which occurs when the organism becomes aware of emotions
associated with changes in its internal body state. It is able to recognize that his
thoughts are his own, which develops a moment of sense of self
Dasein als In-der-Welt-sein: Being as in-the-world-being
Dementia: brain diseases that cause a long-term and often gradual decrease in the ability
to think and remember that is great enough to affect a person's daily functioning
Dissociative symptoms: clinical symptoms of mental diseases, especially personality dis-
orders, that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/
or perception
Draussen-sein als Aus-der-Welt-sein: being outside as being-out-of-the-world
Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM): is a type of the explicit memory, which consists
of episodes recollected from an individual's life. Episodic means aspects such as
personal experiences and specific objects, people and events experienced at particular
place and time.
Extended self: The autobiographical self draws on memory of past experiences which in-
volves use of higher thought
Exposition training: psychotherapeutic confrontation therapy of cognitive behavioral
therapy for treatment of specific anxieties and phobias
Feeling of knowing (FOK) judgments: being able to recall specific information more speci-
fically whether that knowledge exists within memory and they are made either prior
to the memory target being found
Fremd: external
Innenraum: inside space
Lebensschwerpunkte: essential aspects of life
Life paths: time-geographical term which describes the individual's path within a situa-
tional life context in time and space/place
Major depression: mental health disorder with low mood, low self-esteem, loss of interest,
low energy and the possible complication of suicide, duration > 2 weeks
Ortslosigkeit: placelessness
Paresis: a condition of muscular weakness caused by nerve damage or disease; partial
paralysis
Personality disorders: a mental disorder characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of
behavior, cognition, emotions, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts,
especially human relationship.
Place identity: meaning and significance of places for individuals, and how these meanings
contribute to individual conceptualizations of self related to the historical, social,
cultural, biological and physical context of the individual
Prisms: Time-geographical term, which show individuals' possible behavior in time-space
given their capability constraints and coupling constraints
Protoself: most basic representation of self, a non-conscious body's internal state, which
constantly detects and records the internal physical changes that affect the home-
ostasis of the organism
Raum-, Leib- and Selbsterleben: space/place-, body- and self-experience
Raumselbst: self-denoted space
Self: cognitive and affective representation of one's identity which plays an important role
in human attention, perception, orientation, motivation, values and social identity
Somatization and pain disorder: mental disorder characterized by recurring, multiple, and
current, clinically significant complaints about somatic symptoms
Substance dependence: drug dependence, an adaptive state that develops from repeated
drug use
Time geography: a transdisciplinary perspective on spatial and temporal processes and
events such as social and environmental interaction, and biographies of individuals
Topophilic: topophilia topos = place, philia = love, strong sense of place based on a love
of different aspects of such a place
Trajectory: Time-geographical term which indicates a spatiotemporal footprint that an
individual leaves behind when he moves in space and time during a situation or
during his life.
Un-heim-lich: unheimlich eerie; Heim = home