Living spaces of death: An environmental psychological analysis of a Hungarian children’s hospice institution
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17627/ALKPSZICH.2025.4.293Keywords:
children’s hospice, palliative care, fieldwork, spatial practices, heterotopia, counter-architectureAbstract
Background and Aims: Children’s hospice institutions occupy an ambivalent social and spatial position: as a consequence of the social taboo and invisibility surrounding child death, they are simultaneously marginalized and framed as spaces that support quality of life. The aim of this study is to provide an environmental psychological analysis of the Tábitha Children’s Hospice House, with particular attention to the ways in which hospice spaces become sites for the renegotiation of meanings and narratives associated with life and death.
Methods: From September 2024 onwards, I conducted weekly participant observation at Tábitha Children’s Hospice House. Through the thematic analysis of fieldnotes, I identified narratives and symbolic practices related to spatial use. In addition, particular emphasis was placed on the interpretation of recurring symbols and metaphors employed in the institution’s self-representation.
Results: The interpretation of children’s hospice spaces is largely shaped by the metaphor of the “house,” evoking notions of homeliness and care while simultaneously remaining a site of loss of control and transformation. The Tábitha House functions as a heterotopic space that reconfigures relationships to life and death: communal and personal spaces enable families to share experiences and maintain everyday routines despite the presence of illness and meanings associated with child death. At the same time, interpreting the institution as a home gives rise to tensions, particularly those related to boundary-making, the negotiation between professional and private spheres, and conflicts surrounding the separation of Goffman’s “front stage” and “back stage” domains.
Discussion: In dialogue with László Földényi’s work, the children’s hospice can also be interpreted as a form of “counter-architecture” which, in contrast to functional and sterile “spaces of death,” seeks to create new cultural narratives at the boundary between life and death. Characteristic interpretations of family roles contribute not only to the construction of the institutional identity of the Tábitha House, but also to strengthening the coping capacities of families using its services, as well as to the use of care settings as transitional, ritual spaces.
