Couch potatoes

Architects' Journal, The, August, 2004 by Anonymous

The latest catalogue from MIT Press arrives, with its usual insights into the rarefied world of American academics. Among the titles to look forward to this autumn is Sylvia Lavin's Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture. 'Arguing persuasively that the received historical views of both psychoanalysis and architecture have led to a suppression of their compelling coincidences and unorthodoxies, Lavin sets out to unleash mid-century architecture's hidden libido/ says the blurb.

'And neither Neutra nor psychoanalysis emerges unscathed.' I'm sure that goes without saying. Who's next on Ms Lavin's couch? And should her book have been called Neutering Neutra?