Last month several of us had conversations via e-mail and Facebook about the memories of returning to childhood homes. Some of those memories are in the archives of a writers' listserv. Today I learned that research has been done on this process of returning home.
From the article about the research at Medical News Today:
Each year millions of American adults visit a childhood home. Few can anticipate the effect it will have on them. Often serving several important psychological needs, these trips are not intended as visits with people from their past. Rather, those returning to their homes have a strong desire to visit the places that comprised the landscape of their childhood.
Santa Clara University Psychology Professor Jerry Burger found that almost everyone who visits a
childhood home goes to the place they lived from the ages of five to 12. Burger says people have an emotional attachment to their childhood home because it's a part of their self-identity, and the self is developed between the ages of 5 and 12.
Burger found that one third of American adults over the age of the 30 has made a trip to visit a childhood home. There are three primary reasons for the trip:
Some related links:
- Click to read the rest of the article "The Psychology Behind Returning To Your Childhood Home"
- Click to learn more about the new book on the topic of returning home
- Here you may read excerpts from the book Returning Home: Reconnecting to Our Childhoods; just click on "Click to look inside"
- Share your returning-home stories here
Note: I wonder if Burger was teaching at Santa Clara University when I was there? I took more than half of a Masters in Counseling Psychology when I was at SCU attending law school.
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