After all, it has just had the greatest topological shock it will ever suffer, having burst from the foetal sac into the glare of exteriority. Separating the inside from the outside is a conceptual boundary, a picture-frame, an envelope, a skin. The primary metaphor is that the self's interior is the human body. This conceptual membrane is elastic. A house identified as the self is called home , a country identified as the self is called homeland .
Home is a surrogate for, and extension of, the self and the body.
A sense of home, however you define it, is as important to self-identity as the persistence of personal memory. The idea of the building as a body has recurred in architectural theory since Roman times. Burglary of a home often causes more distress than the objective loss deserves, because it is experienced metaphorically as an assault on, a penetration of, the owner's body. Unlike the house, in short, home is a subjective construct, a metaphor of the self and body. But its conceptual envelope is expandable to include any appropriated zone, geographical or mental.