THE ODYSSEY: CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES

THE ODYSSEY: CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTICPERSPECTIVESbjp_1144 493..505

Jean White

abstract As this paper was originally given as a lecture, I have retained somethingof the spoken tone of the original. The paper explores some of the ways in whichOdysseus is transformed from a stereotypical Greek warrior and hero into a wiser,humbler and more complex and sophisticated man through his various adventureson his return journey from Troy to Ithaca. These adventures symbolically describeand recapitulate some of the central tenets of psychoanalytic theories of psychicchange and growth from the contemporary Independent, Lacanian and post-Kleinian schools.

Key words: dismantling of narcissistic identifications, regressive episodes as aspringboard to further growth, benign aggression, aesthetic or ecstatic cathexes,psychic devolution and aloneness, the journey of subjectivity

As one of the greatest legends in human history, The Odyssey (Homerc.700bc) has inspired a multitude of interpretations and continues to do so.A few of the more recent versions include James Joyce’s (1922) Ulysses, oneof the greatest novels of the 20th century, Derek Walcott’s epic poemOmeros (1990), and the films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), directed byStanley Kubrick, and Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984). More recent films,Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2004) exploits the fantastic and mythical aspects ofthe legend and even the Japanese Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)contains clear references to the Odyssey. I think Yann Martel’s (2002) prize-winning book, The Life of Pi, also reflects the formative impact of adven-turing into the unknown that is so central to Homer’s story.

Today the word ‘odyssey’ is used in a colloquial sense in many languagesall over the world to mean a journey of discovery and of transformation.TheOdysseus who finally arrived back in Ithaca after ten years adventuring onthe high seas (remember that the Mediterranean was the high seas for theancient Greeks) was not the same hero who set out from Troy. What I wantto focus on today is how and why this was so, and how this radical transforma-tion took place. Or, in other words, why did Odysseus need to have so manyadventures before he went home?

jean white is a pluralistic psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor who haspractised in London for over 30 years. She is the author of Generation: Preoccupa-tions and Conflicts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2006). She lecturesinternationally.Address for correspondence: Flat 5, 77 Sunnyside Road, London N193SL. [[email protected]]

© The authorJournal compilation © 2009 BAP and Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 493

The part of the Odyssey I want to look at in more detail today, there-fore, is the central part of the legend: Odysseus’ adventures on the highseas in the interim, transitional space between Troy and Ithaca. Within thestructure of Homer’s story, these adventures were recounted by Odysseusto his generous life-saving host, King Alcinous of Phaeacia, at a series ofbanquets at the penultimate stage of his journey (Homer, in Shewring1980, pp. 76–153). Most of you will be familiar with the story, but for clar-ity’s sake I will briefly recount some of the main features. Odysseus was arenowned hero-warrior and King of Ithaca who journeyed from his birth-place and home, leaving his wife Penelope, his son Telemachus and hisparents to fight in the Trojan War. Leaving Troy victorious, he set sail forIthaca with a fleet of ships and a crew of stalwart sailors but was ship-wrecked several times and, as a consequence, engaged in a series of fan-tastic encounters with goddesses and mythical beings on the islands wherehe landed. There were so many of these adventures that I’ll need to bypasssome of the more minor ones, mention others in passing and focus onthose that seem to be the most significant in more detail as I go throughthe lecture.

Briefly then, after narrowly escaping the seductions of lotus-eatingwhich render a man oblivious of who he is, Odysseus defeated theone-eyed giant Cyclops, Polyphemus, with a mixture of guile and aggres-sion (ibid., pp. 99–112). He then managed to avoid being turned into aswine by the sorceress goddess, Circe, with the help of Hermes, messengerof the gods and guide of souls to the underworld, and a moly or man-dragora root (ibid., pp. 113–27). At Circe’s instigation, he went on ajourney to Hades, the underworld of the afterlife, where he encounteredmany mythical figures, including Jocasta, mother of Oedipus, Teiresias, theblind prophet, and his own mother, Anticleia, who had died during hisabsence (ibid., pp. 128–42). Following that adventure, he successfully navi-gated the dreadful straits between Scylla and Charybdis and finally lostwhat remained of his men off the island of the Sun-God, Hyperion (ibid.,pp. 143–53). He then landed alone in Ogygia, where he enjoyed a seven-year affair with the goddess, Calypso (ibid., pp. 82, 284). He was finallyreunited with his wife Penelope, his son Telemachus, and his father Laertesafter slaughtering his wife’s many suitors (ibid., pp. 154–298). However, thelegend has a curious ending, made ambiguous by Teiresias’ prophesy asto what was to come after Odysseus’ return to Ithaca (ibid., pp. 130–1). Iwill return to some parts of the story in more detail as I go through thelecture.

Before I embark on his highly symbolic adventures, though, I want tospend a little time looking at how Odysseus is described in the legend andhow the gods determine the conditions of his voyage. He is continually andrepeatedly described as ‘subtle’, a man who thinks on his feet and is pos-sessed of a ‘cunning intelligence’ (passim). He always listens to and relies on

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his intuition. Indeed his entire journey takes place under the auspicesof Athena, goddess of wisdom and his muse, mentor and constanthelpmeet.

More predictably, perhaps, for a legendary hero and warrior, he is ‘head-strong’, fearless and able to be ruthless when the occasion demands, whilstremaining a caring, compassionate leader of his men (passim). He isdescribed as a man ‘of wide-ranging spirit’ and is much affected by beauty(The Odyssey is full of lyrical, ecstatic descriptions of landscapes, foodand wine as well as women) (passim). Above all, within the context of thiscomplex, multi-faceted story, Odysseus is presented as very far from perfect:he often makes mistakes but usually learns from them. Nonetheless he isseen as a man who gets something right and therefore as a model of thenecessary travails and processes involved in becoming a fully-fledged humanbeing and something close to a wise man – certainly a wiser man and ahumbler one by the time he returns home.

Odysseus does not embark on his 10-year sequence of adventures of hisown conscious volition. In the legend, his adventures are determined by thegods – in particular, as I have said, Athena, goddess of learning and wisdom,but also Poseidon, the sea god, who repeatedly wrecks Odysseus’ plans withstormy seas. I should like to suggest that we read the gods of the legend asthe unconscious, the most powerful aspect of the determination of Odysseus’fate, and perhaps particularly that part of unconscious life located in thedrives. Poseidon could be seen as the necessarily disruptive power of theunconscious, breaking up conscious plans and organized forms of thought, atheme I’ll return to a little later.Athena can be viewed as the epistemophilicinstinct or the drive to learn, which Klein (1928) posited as a powerfulmotivating force and Bion (1962) placed as the most central aspect ofpsychic development in his new process model of a mind in constant evolu-tion, leading we know not where, if we can learn from our own experience(White 2006). The capacity to learn from experience is a quality Odysseusbears in abundance.

But learning from experience is not the only form of drive-related devel-opment to be found in the Odyssey. In his radical revision of Freudiandrive theory after 1964, Jacques Lacan rejected any notion of anorganized development of drive-related stages culminating in a genitalorientation. Instead he posited a constant movement of the partial subli-mated drives as the determining factor in human individuality, to which headded scopic and invocatory drives with their corresponding partialobjects of the gaze and the voice, and thereby introduced an aestheticdimension to the most elemental developmental and creative forces. Lacanthought that the ways the partial drives combine is unique to each per-son and can be compared to a Surrealist montage, a collage of disparate,perhaps jarring elements, whose very unpredictability safeguards humanindividuality (White 2006).

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Lacan (1964) referred to the movement of the drives as an adventure, andChristopher Bollas, perhaps unwittingly, echoes this view when he talksabout drive-related activity as a satisfying and necessary activity in and ofitself. Bollas says:

Indeed I think Freud’s theory of the instinct with its source, its aim and itsobject is an arc . . . a pure arc . . . without any actual ‘other’ present in a way. . . because the erotics of the instinct drive is not simply in its final gratificationthrough an object: it’s the entire process . . . My own view is that in the forma-tion of character we similarly have that arc: except I would say that, instead ofthere being a pure line from source through aim and object, there are manylines that fragment and break, in something like a vast symphonic movementwhich is, in and of itself, a pleasure. It is not the end point, not the objects thatreduce the excitation, that constitute the pleasure. The pleasure is in the entiremovement. (Bollas 1997, p. 9)

Here we begin to find a partial answer to the question of why Odysseusneeded to have so many adventures, and I want you to hold onto this notionof the movement of the drives as an adventure and as powerfully formativeof character.

Another central tenet in Bollas’s view of the drive to development is thatof the loneliness of truly coming to inhabit a mind of one’s own. In most ofOdysseus’ adventures, he loses some of his men, either through shipwreck orslaughter, until he finally arrives at the island of Ogygia, where he has hisaffair with Calypso, completely alone. In a discussion of Winnicott’s conceptof essential aloneness, Bollas argues the need for psychic devolution, thatis to say, a dismantling of the relative safety of earlier structures as ‘. . . wemove more deeply into unknowable realms’ (Bollas 1992, p. 242, my italics).Bollas continues: ‘Some people, and perhaps they are among our artists andphilosophers, sense this psycho-devolution as a fact of human life and aim tostay with it . . . , but the risks to such adventurers are high. Most people, in myview, find consciousness of this aspect of the human condition – the com-plexity born of having a mind to oneself – simply too hard to bear’ (ibid., p.242, my italics). I also want you to hold onto the idea of becoming psychicallyalone as an integral aspect of the journey of human evolution.

Bollas goes on to argue that we tend to retreat from the difficulty ofhaving a mind of our own in various forms of regression, perhaps the mostcommon being the regressive possibilities enabled by the mutual depen-dence of marriage or partnership. In Odysseus’ increasingly lonely journey,he meets with a variety of regressive lures and possibilities: some, like theSirens and the Lotus-Eaters, he avoids or escapes; some, like the journey intothe Underworld, he engages with and learns from; and some, like the longaffair with Calypso, he becomes ensnared in and so stuck for a while. It is ofthe utmost significance that he always manages to disentangle himself fromthese regressive episodes and move on to greater things.


Many theorists, from both the contemporary Independent and post-Kleinian schools, have argued the need for a necessarily regressive move-ment or swing as an integral part of psychic creativity (White 2006). In ‘Therole of illusion in symbol-formation’, for example, Marion Milner (1952)described the loss of personal boundaries within transitional cultural experi-ences, and particularly in ecstatic ones, as ‘. . . a regression in order to take astep forward’ (p. 85). Masud Khan (1983) thought a period of ‘lying fallow’was essential to any creative endeavour, whilst Bion (1962) theorized thenecessary regression to less organized forms of thought to enable a new ideato become possible as PS↔D. In other words, without free movementbetween the paranoid/schizoid and depressive positions, change and growthare impossible, and I think this might be Poseidon’s role in the story. In TheOdyssey, there is a constant reciprocal alternation between states of actualor potential regression and the capacity to move on: the defeat of theCyclops follows the avoidance of lotus-eating; the long journey into Hadesand confrontation with his personal, social and mythological history enableOdysseus to emerge armed with Teiresias’ warning about his immediatefuture and also Teiresias’ prophesy as to what will follow Odysseus’ return toIthaca; this then enables the successful navigation of the dire straits betweenScylla and Charybdis. Finally, Odysseus’ prolonged state of inertia withCalypso does eventually enable him to proceed with his journey and returnhome.

Now I will return to the story and explore some of Odysseus’ variousadventures in a little more detail. Immediately after his departure from Troy,‘the wind’ brings Odysseus to Ismarus, the island of the Cicones, where hesacks the town, kills the men and takes sufficient women and chattels to giveall his men a fair share. Here Odysseus is behaving as a stereotypical Greekwarrior hero and engaging in the type of behaviour that would have beenexpected of such a person. His departure is held up by his crew who linger toslay more cattle and drink more wine. Hence the Cicones have time tomuster troops from other parts of their island and a battle ensues in whichOdysseus loses six men from each of his ships. This is the first of his signifi-cant losses of his comrades and a way-stage in Odysseus’ increasing solitari-ness.After leaving Ismarus, the remaining troops are beset by a storm on thehigh seas and, after taking refuge on an unnamed island for two days, theyare blown by ruthless winds for nine days to the land of the Lotus-Eaters.

Dragging his tearful men away from the regressive lure of the lotus thatwould make them forget any desire to return home, Odysseus sets sail againand lands on an island just off the land of the Cyclops, who are described aslawless men with no concern for others, civic assemblies or respect for thegods. After banqueting on the goats that roam freely on this island and thewine they always carry with them, Odysseus and his men sleep and the nextday go exploring. They come across the cave of the one-eyed giant, Poly-phemus, an uncouth monster set on unrighteousness.

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Odysseus approaches the cave with twelve of his bravest men and, as thegiant is out, they light a fire and eat some of his cheese, after making duelibation to the gods. They hide in a corner when Polyphemus returns, drivessome of his sheep inside and blocks the entrance with a huge boulder. Whenthe giant spots them, he boasts of his godlessness and asks where their shipis. Odysseus lies and claims to be shipwrecked. Polyphemus then proceeds todevour two of Odysseus’ men, tearing them from limb to limb and leavingnothing behind. The next morning, he eats two more men for breakfast and,whilst he is out with his flocks leaving the remaining men locked in the cave,Odysseus devises a cunning plan. He sharpens a huge stake of olive wood,hardens it in the fire and hides it under a layer of dung.

On the Cyclops’ return, he devours yet more men and Odysseus temptshim with some of the delicious wine they carry on board. As Polyphemusbecomes increasingly drunk, Odysseus cunningly claims that his name is‘Noman’ (Homer, in Shewring 1980, p. 108). When the Cyclops finally suc-cumbs to a drunken stupor, Odysseus heats his stake in the embers of the fireand drills it into the giant’s eye. His fellow Cyclops gather round the cave inresponse to Polyphemus’ bellowing and ask what is wrong but, when thegiant shouts that ‘Noman’ has done violence to him, they leave him alone.Polyphemus removes the boulder and sits in the doorway. Odysseus ties eachof his men underneath some fat thick-fleeced rams bound together in threesand curls himself up under the shaggy belly of the biggest ram. When dawnarrives, they are able to pass out of the cave without the blind giant doinganything other than feeling the backs of his rams.

I have focused on this episode in some detail as I think that symbolicallyit marks a critical structuring moment in the dismantling of Odysseus’identity as it had been known up to this point. Rather than clinging to hisrenown as a hero and warrior, Odysseus needs to become ‘Noman’ if he isto escape the clutches of the brutish uncivilized giant. Now what can thissignify? Lacan (1949, 1954–55) thought the ego was essentially a narciss-istic structure, deriving from the mirror stage in early infant life, in whicha baby misrecognizes him/herself as his own image and as whole, completeand ideal. Although, for Lacan, the mirror stage does constitute a neces-sary structuring moment in the several stages of separation from the firstOther, it is primitive, narcissistic and a distortion. The ego and its constitu-ent identifications need to be subverted in Lacanian analysis for thejourney to commence of becoming a subject, finding one’s own desireand also, ultimately, one’s own drive destiny (White 2006). In his secondseminar Lacan announced: ‘. . . the ego is the sum of the identificationsof the subject . . . like the superimposition of various coats borrowedfrom what I would call the bric-à-brac of its props department’(Lacan 1954–55, p. 155). This, then, is the first stage in the dismantling ofOdysseus’ social identifications, as he moves more deeply into unknowablerealms.


Bion simply bypassed the ego in his account of a mind continually inevolution through thought or in deterioration through its reverse. Hedescribed the ego to his daughter as ‘. . . a figment of psychoanalysts’ imagi-nations’ (Bion Talamo 1997, p. 52). Even Bollas, who does deem somestrengthening of the ego to be necessary in certain forms of disturbance,thinks that at more sophisticated levels of development many early identi-fications need to be left behind. He says:

As the [person] comes into the presence of his own mind, he is launched, in myview, on a most disturbing journey. This is a place where all of us live, momentto moment, in an area that I think Winnicott specified in his notion of essentialaloneness, and certainly implied in his notion of the isolate that each of us is.Aswe develop, this mind becomes more complex, ironically enough, in relationto its sophistication. Psycho-development, then, is in part devolutionary, notevolutionary: a dismantling of both pre-oedipal and oedipal early childhoodstructures. Fathers and mothers, early wishes and urges, primary needs andsatisfactions, fade into a kind of mnemic opacity as we move more deeply intoquite unknowable realms. (Bollas 1992, pp. 241–2)

Odysseus, then, needs to become ‘Noman’ before he can continue with thejourney of becoming more deeply himself.

At the same time and with one fell swoop, the one-eyed single vision ofthe uncouth giant is destroyed. Again this can be read at a symbolic level asthe necessary loosening of rigid and fixed singular perspectives deemedessential to psychic growth by theorists of all three contemporary Indepen-dent, Lacanian and post-Kleinian schools (White 2006). Bion (1965) andLacan (1960) concur that the inability to view things from more than onesingular perspective is psychotic. For Lacan single vision is imaginary – thatis to say, based in the primitive, pre-symbolic mode of apprehending experi-ence that is related to the ego (Lacan 1949). Bion’s (1965, 1970) concepts of‘multiple vertices’ and ‘binocular vision’ refer to the ability to view thesame issue from different plural perspectives and are an essential aspect ofreality-testing. The new theorizations of intersubjectivity, which were devel-oped in Independent theory from Winnicott’s (1969) concept of ‘the use ofan object’ by Jessica Benjamin (1995, 1998), Thomas Ogden (1994, 1997),Michael Eigen (1981) and others, emphasize the developmental necessity ofcoming to see how other people’s perspectives are different from one’s own.Without this bracing formative collision with the shock of another’s con-trasting point of view, one runs the risk of remaining enmeshed in a chimeraof projective and introjective mechanisms which effectively constitute aclosed circuit, and are also related to the now dethroned ego (White 2006,2008).

One final word on the ruthless aggression inherent in Odysseus’ destruc-tion of the one-eyed Cyclops single vision, and indeed other episodes of hisepic voyage, before I move on. Necessary ruthlessness constitutes a centraltenet of Winnicott’s view of benign aggression as a driving force in human

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development (Winnicott 1950). This may sound shocking to our ‘depressive-position-oriented’ ears. However, necessary ruthlessness in Winnicott’ssense does not refer to either amorality or unconcerned behaviour or greedbut to the capacity to act decisively when life requires it (White 2006). Bollasagain elaborates this. He says: ‘. . . if we cannot be ruthless in the primary,instinctual sense, in the sense of the infant’s need to feed, if we cannot followthat early urge . . . I don’t believe that the true self or object usage willarrive’ (Bollas 1997, p. 20). Lacan (1948, 1964) also considered aggression tobe a driving force in development and a necessary aspect of the insistence ofthe drives. Let us not forget that Odysseus never departs from being aconcerned and generous leader of his men, respectful of the gods and civiccustoms, and loving and loyal to his friends and family.

After leaving the land of the Cyclops, Odysseus arrives at the island ofAeolus, where he receives lavish hospitality and the gift of a bag of ‘everywind that blows’ to speed his journey. Unfortunately some of his men’s greedand curiosity lead them to open the bag, which causes a massive tempest inwhich all the ships Odysseus sails with are lost except his own. Bion (1967)thought that arrogance, greed and intrusive curiosity were all hallmarks ofthe psychotic personality. After losing yet more men at the hands of thecannibal Laestrogynians, in this now more vulnerable state Odysseus arriveson the island of Aeaea, where dwells Circe, daughter of the Sun God, Helius,and Perse, the ocean’s daughter. This part of the legend, Odysseus’ adven-tures with Circe, is open to many interpretations. I’m not claiming to providethe definitive one here.

Briefly, the beautiful Circe is possessed of strange powers and magic drugs.She strikes Odysseus’ sailors with a wand and they are turned into swine inbody but their minds are left unchanged. Odysseus is helped by Hermes, thewinged messenger, who gives him moly or mandragora, a herb of magicvirtue to thwart Circe’s enchantment, and instructs Odysseus to sleep withCirce. Then there follows another of those episodes of sumptuous sensualityso characteristic of this legend. Odysseus’ men are turned back into younger,taller and handsomer versions of themselves and they all stay for a year offeasting and love-making. Eventually Odysseus requests Circe’s assistanceto go home, and she stipulates that he must first pay a visit to Hades, theunderworld of the afterlife, and see Persephone and consult Teiresias, thelegendary blind prophet and seer. Odysseus meets many significant peoplefrom history and mythology, including his own mother who has died duringhis absence, in Hades. Teiresias forbids him to eat the cattle of the Sun Godon his journey home and makes a further prophecy about what is to comeafter Odysseus’ return to Ithaca.

Poor, blind, androgynous Teiresias, key player in the Oedipus and otherGreek myths, is a figure shrouded in mystery and ambiguity whose utter-ances are ever gnomic but always true. His story is exceedingly complex andincludes allegedly having spent seven years as a woman. Unfortunately I do


not have space to investigate the intricacies of Teiresias’ qualities here.He/she merits a whole paper to him/herself. In ‘The Waste Land’, T.S. Eliotdescribed him thus:

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can seeAt the violet hour, the evening hour that strivesHomeward, and brings the sailor home from sea.

(Eliot 1922, p. 31)

Soothsayer, truthsayer, Teiresias can see into the beyond, that mostbeloved word of Lacan, and ‘the unknown, new and not yet evolved’, whichwas Bion’s most-used phrase (White 2006). He must surely therefore rep-resent intuition, and it is most interesting that only through this long journeyback though his personal, social and mythological history can Odysseusarrive at his own truth. In Lacanian theory, the process of breaking throughone’s historically and linguistically acquired narrative and socially con-structed identity, and re-positioning oneself in relation to the earlier struc-tures Bollas mentions, is necessary in order to be able to see things in one’sown way and ultimately to be able to take responsibility for oneself (Fink1997). In Lacanian theory, it is partly through this process that desire andultimately one’s own drive destiny can be liberated (ibid.).

Teiresias’ warning about the cattle of the Sun-God, then, although of greatsignificance in relation to Odysseus’ immediate journey onwards, is ulti-mately of far less importance than his forecast of Odysseus’ further journeyinto still stranger lands.Teiresias’ immediate warning can perhaps be viewedas a caution against greed and acquisitiveness, especially in relation to theplundering of the energetic resources of the earth, as the cattle are those ofthe Sun-God.

Next, then, assisted by some sound counsel from Circe, Odysseus success-fully resists the lure of the Sirens by waxing his mens’ ears, then navigates thedreadful straits between Scylla and Charybdis. Here we have a pair of femalemonsters almost unparalleled in myth or legend. Scylla ‘. . . has twelve feetall dangling down, six long necks with a grisly head on each of them, and ineach head a triple row of crowded and close-set teeth, fraught with blackdeath’ (Homer, in Shewring 1980, p. 145). Charybdis sucks the sea from itsbed three times a day, then belches it forth. Julia Kristeva accounts for thesespectacular female monsters and witches in the mythologies of many landsthrough her concept of ‘abjection’, which describes how the pre-oedipalmother becomes an object of horror, distaste and fear when children of bothsexes separate from her: ‘a magnet of fascination and repulsion’ and ‘a locusof horror and adoration’ (Kristeva 1980; 1993, pp. 118–19).

Scylla seizes six of Odysseus’ men but the remainder escape with Odys-seus and row on to the island of the Sun-God and its fabled cattle, wherethey are stranded for a whole month by the South Wind. Odysseus’ men,

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weakened by starvation, disobey his command and slaughter some cattle. Inconsequence, Zeus strikes Odysseus’ ship directly with a thunderbolt andOdysseus sails on completely alone now on a fragment of his ship, narrowlyescapes being swallowed by Charybdis again, and drifts to the island ofOgygia and the goddess Calypso.

Odysseus’ seven-year affair with Calypso, beautiful ‘nymph of braidedtresses’ (Homer, in Shewring 1980, p. 56), is the longest regressive episode ofhis entire journey and he has to be rescued from it by Hermes again, sent byAthena. How can we understand this? Calypso offers Odysseus immortalityand eternal youth; she feeds on nectar and ambrosia; Odysseus takes hispleasure in love-making with her even to the end of his stay, when he isdepressed and pining to return home and to Penelope. Perhaps this can beunderstood as the final lure of a narcissistic state before Odysseus takes uphis lonely journey again and goes home to face all the realities that comewith it: of ageing, of conflict, of doubt, of ambivalence, and the threat of afurther journey into the beyond to come. Carol Leader’s paper deals withOdysseus’ return to Ithaca and some of the events surrounding it. Now Iwant to take a little time to think further about some of the processes thathave been revealed in this story of a man who is not trapped and doomedlike Oedipus and Narcissus but who goes out into life and is unafraid toencounter the unknown.

So what are some of the processes deemed central to psychic growth incontemporary psychoanalytic theory, which can be found in the Odyssey?Intense aesthetic or ecstatic cathexes of objects, people, landscapes, artisticand cultural experiences are deemed formative by many theorists of thecontemporary Independent school, especially Marion Milner, Masud Khanand Michael Eigen but also Thomas Ogden and Christopher Bollas (White2006). Donald Meltzer (Meltzer & Williams 1988), a recent post-Kleinian,theorized ‘aesthetic reciprocity’ or the ability to see the wonder in the worldand not to need to dominate, control or possess it as something we are allborn with but may struggle to regain in later life. Lacan’s (1964) inclusion ofan aesthetic dimension to the partial sublimated drives also clearly indicatesan aesthetic aspect to psychic growth. The Odyssey is one of the mostsumptuously sensual myths in history and an understanding of the centralityof experiences of awe, wonder and beauty is intrinsic to its fabric.

Winnicott (1950) posited benign aggression as a driving force in develop-ment and Lacan (1964) placed aggression as a necessary part of the insis-tence of the drives and therefore in the formation of character. Odysseuswould have been sunk, quite literally, without his robust but non-malignaggression – he is never needlessly cruel or vindictive. In his theory of theuse of an object, Winnicott (1969) argued aggression to be the centralpropulsion towards the discovery of difference, and this theory was taken upand further developed by Thomas Ogden and Jessica Benjamin in theirrespective concepts of intersubjectivity (White 2006). Odysseus successfully


extricates himself from all the hooks and snares that provide a comfortingillusion that difference, conflict, doubt and ambivalence are not necessary.

Some contemporary Independent, all Lacanian and some post-Kleiniantheorists posit an ever increasing level of internal separation from anyform of primary other as the route to growth (White 2006). Lacan doesthis the most obviously; the mirror stage, paternal function, the dialectiza-tion of desire and fleeting access to the jouissance of the drives can all beseen as movements towards separation from any form of other (ibid.). Theuse of an object and Benjamin’s (1995) version of intersubjectivity can alsobe seen as a developing capacity to recognize difference and thereforebecome more solidly grounded in increasing separation. Bion, too, thoughhis model of mind is predicated on the introjection of maternal contain-ment (Bion 1962), in his work on transformations and O stressed thecapacity to reach out to radical alterity as the most sophisticated accom-plishment (Bion 1965, 1970). Odysseus is surely on the path to psychicaloneness.

I have already spoken about the regressive episodes in some detail andtheir indispensability in terms of Odysseus’ ability to move on and becomemore fully himself. I have also talked about Odysseus’ increasing psychicsolitude as a requirement of this development. Both of these are central tohis increasing capacity to learn from his own experience, which Bion (1962)posited as the fundamental drive to growth in his earlier work. In his laterwork, though, Bion (1965, 1970) went beyond what he called the K link andturned his attention to what he called F or intuitive faith and O or ultimatereality, the reality of the beyond. Odysseus always goes forward into theunknown with an unconscious intuitive knowledge that what he finds therewill enrich him in ways that may not always be immediately apparent, and helistens to Teiresias, his intuitive destiny or truth. Indeed Odysseus’ entirejourney can be viewed as a ‘transformation in O’ in Bion’s terms, a seismicshift in the grounds of his being and his sense of himself. Odysseus returns toIthaca as a beggar, stripped of his social identifications, and becomes knownas himself only through his capacity to string his own bow and shoot anarrow through 12 axe-heads, or to aim to the heart of things with accuracyand speed. Interestingly, Bion (1965, 1970) thought that transformations in Oneeded to be accompanied by what he termed turbulence or a sense ofcatastrophe, an atmosphere that permeates The Odyssey in those episodes inwhich Odysseus is moving forward.

In Lacanian theory, a journey of subjectivity or subjectification com-mences with the mirror stage and the establishment of the ego, but theseconstitutive identifications need to be questioned and re-viewed if one’s owndesire and drive destiny, the Lacanian path of truth, are to be liberated. Theopening of the path of desire means that one embarks on a potentiallyendless subjective journey. Bruce Fink, a contemporary Lacanian, describesthis as ‘“Wanderlust”: lust that wanders, or the taking pleasure in wandering

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or wondering’ (Fink 1997, p. 231). Desire never seeks satisfaction but ratherits own continuance and furtherance, and Odysseus’ journey goes on.

This brings me to Teiresias’ second prophecy to Odysseus in Hades. I willnow quote it in full:

When you have killed the suitors in your own palace – whether by guile orwhether openly with the keen bronze – then go forth, carrying with you abalanced oar, till you come to men who know nothing of the sea and eat foodunseasoned with salt, men unacquainted with ships and their crimson cheeks orwith balanced oars that are to ships what wings are to birds. I will give you aplain token you cannot miss.When another traveller falls in with you and takesthe thing upon your shoulder to be a winnowing fan, then plant that balancedoar in the ground and offer to Lord Poseidon the noble sacrifice of a ram anda bull and a boar that mates with sows. Then return home and make offering ofsacred hecatombs to the deathless gods whose home is wide heaven itself, toeach of them in turn. And death will come to you [and here, most interestingly,translations from the Greek vary, so that this sentence can read either ‘far fromsea’ or ‘out of the sea’: in other words Odysseus may die either at sea or awayfrom the sea], a gentle death that will ease your days when the years of easehave left you frail and your people around you enjoy all happiness. This is myprophecy: it is true. (Homer, in Shewring 1980, pp. 130–1)

Teiresias’ prophecy is open to several interpretations. Carol Leaderexplores some of them in her paper. But what I want you to imagine is thescale of journey required nearly 3,000 years ago for Odysseus to travel so farfrom a Greek island that he meets men who have never encountered noreven heard of the sea. Not only then is Odysseus’ journey very far from overat the end of The Odyssey but he has yet another very different, great voyageof discovery and transformation ahead of him.

Note

All references to The Odyssey (Homer c.700 bc) are given to the translation byWalter Shewring, published in Oxford World’s Classics in 1980.

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Documents

THE ODYSSEY: CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES