First proposed by Guy Debord in his 1955 essay "Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography," the term "psychogeography" is defined as "the study of the specific effects (and affects) of the built environment (intended or not) on the emotions and actions of individuals" (Buchanan, Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory, 2010, pp. 390-91). As an impulse to experience urban spaces in radically new and imaginative ways, the concept "psychogeography" will guide our inquiry into the ways contemporary literature seeks to diagnose and re-imagine actual space. We will focus on selected 20th and 21st century fiction and non-fiction that explore the effects of spatial perception on the individual and communal psyche. Our aim is to examine the way imagined and, in some cases, even hallucinated spaces reflect the contemporary problems of spatial surveillance, control and dispossession while at the same time revealing the need and strategies of ordinary users to overcome their spatial alienation and reclaim their environment.