Logging in to account on 12.04 installation leads to perpetual loop

The strangest thing started happening earlier this week: each time I try to log into my laptop account (ubuntu 12.04), I get a very short black screen with a few lines of text, then I get sent back to the login screen. Intriguingly enough, I can perfectly log into the guest account and into another non-admin account I had created before. I can access the command line via ctrl+alt+F1 and log myself into my account, but then I have no clue as to how further investigate this issue. Any help greatly appreciated.

Log in on a TTY (ctrl+alt+f1), run this:

sudo chown -R YOURUSERNAME:YOURUSERNAME /home/YOURUSERNAME/

Of course, replace YOURUSERNAME with your actual username (don't read over the semicolon).

Now, try logging in again.