There is the adage “home is where the heart is”, or saying and song lyric “wherever I leave my hat is my home”. Clearly we can have family home, or if separated paternal or maternal home, perhaps childhood and marital home.
For the uniformed services work may be both family and home. For office workers perhaps the 9 to 5 is a retreat and escape from home, and therefore itself a form off sanctuary, refuge or home.
The sheer variety of names suggest the different meanings from the term home: Abode; Residence; Habitat; Haven; Hearth; Homestead; Domicile; Dwelling; Retreat; Safe haven; Household; Nest; Den; Lodge; Living quarters; Roost; Hovel; Hideaway; Shelter; Pad(informal); Crib(informal); Digs(informal); Place of residence; Lodgings; Place of habitation; Habitat; Quarters; Base; Resting place; Castle; Habitation
There is a famous series of experiments known as "learned helplessness" conducted by psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1960s, where dogs were given inescapable shocks and then later, even when the situation was changed to give them an escape, they would not take the opportunity. This experiment is often cited in discussions of depression and perceived control over one's environment.
Arguably the dogs like battered spouses stayed at the familiar albeit dysfunctional home in part because it is familiar and because the certainty of sorrow may better coped than the uncertainty of hope.
Home therefore is not always a happy place. Perhaps the only constant in the definitions and purposes of home is that it is familiar to the psyche, even sleeping on the street has a familiarity if not fixed location.
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