The Automatic Writing of the City: Psychosis and Junkspace

To grasp the current urban crisis as evoked by Rem Koolhaas’ notion of junkspace, one must address not only the failures of linguistic, philosophical and architectural representation, but also the urban models that these accounts have established. The decline of traditional religious and social structures, the rise of commodification, and the fixation on representation itself, all contribute to shaping the meaning, decline, and future of the city. The methodology draws on the psychoanalytic frameworks of Freud and Lacan, who viewed psychosis as a mental construct offering fresh insights into the human mind. By integrating Jean Baudrillard’s notion of third-order simulation with Jacques Lacan’s theory of psychosis and other relevant concepts—among which is Jacques-Alain Miller’s formulation of “white psychosis”—this chapter argues that the contemporary city represents the final stage in an often-overlooked correspondence between urban environments and subjectivity. The modern megalopolis results from a process of automatic overwriting analogous to the Lacanian unconscious. By deciphering Lorens Holm’s diagram of the psychotic field of vision, validating Rem Koolhaas’ concept of junkspace, reinterpreting fin-de-siècle case study of the psychotic Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, shedding light on Baudrillard’s notion of tertiary narcissism, and exploring the interplay between the human unconscious and urban environments, this research offers significant contributions to both architecture and psychoanalysis. Not only is our understanding of architecture and urban design broadened, but the complex connections between our inner lives and the spaces we inhabit is also illuminated. Overall, Holm’s diagram and Miller’s formulation characterize what lies between Rem Koolhaas’ 2002 observations and the present day.