“The Odyssey,” I believe, is aware of this too. Once people can reframe who they were in the past, they can have a better chance of charting their course in the future. It has people retell their own stories until they understand them differently. Narrative therapy can help in these situations and others. White shows how addiction, mental illness or trauma prevents some people from returning to their lives. Narrative therapy argues that so much of what we suffer emotionally and psychologically comes from the stories we believe about our place in the world and our ability to influence it. The modern psychological approach of narrative therapy as pioneered by psychotherapists Michael White and David Epston can help us understand this better. Talk therapy has been an important part of psychology for a century, but conversation and storytelling shape people all the time. And I have returned to the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope, contemplating why this conversation is important and what function it serves. In this past year, I fantasized about moments of reunion as the pandemic dragged on. The pleasure lies in the moments of sharing. When Odysseus finally reunites with his wife, Penelope, after 20 years, they make love, but then Athena, Odysseus’ patron and goddess of wisdom and war, lengthens the night so they can take pleasure in telling each other everything they have suffered. This sense of belonging comes in part from other people knowing what we have experienced. Pleasure comes from knowing pain is behind us, but it also comes from understanding where we fit in the world. But what “The Odyssey” shows us is the power of telling our stories. It might seem strange to think that recalling pain could give pleasure. Eumaios invites Odysseus with the following words: “ Let us take pleasure in our terrible pains: for after time a person finds joy even in pain, after they have wandered and suffered much.” When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, is given refuge by his unknowing servant, Eumaios, the two of them speak at length, telling true stories and false ones to reveal who they are. And much of it proceeds through the conversations among the characters. While Odysseus’ arrival on Ithaca is packed with action – he dons a disguise, investigates crimes and murders wrongdoers – in reality, the epic’s second half unfolds slowly. But, in the process, he also rediscovers who he is in the world by reuniting with his family and his home, Ithaca.Ĭonversation is central to its plot. To make it from this barren shore to his family hearth, Odysseus needs to risk his life at sea again. When Odysseus, a Trojan war hero who returns home after 10 years, first appears in the epic, he is weeping on the shore of an isolated island, watched over by the goddess Calypso, whose name, meaning “one who hides,” further emphasizes his isolation and separation. He can also, I believe, offer guidance on how people can heal. Similarly, Homer can help guide us as we return back to our normal worlds after a year of minimizing social contact. And I found comfort in the Odyssey after my father’s unexpected death at 61, in 2011. I found solace in the Homeric epic “The Iliad” and its complex views about violence after the 9/11 attacks. I have worried about how we can heal from our collective trauma.Īs a teacher of Greek literature, I am inclined to turn to the past to understand the present. And for many, this was observed, at times, in isolation at home. Over the past year, we witnessed police violence, increasingly partisan politics and the continued American legacy of racism during a generation-defining pandemic. The passage also communicates how people should live: together, in cooperation, with concern for the common good. In the ancient Greek epic “The Odyssey,” Homer’s hero, Odysseus, describes the wild land of the Cyclops as a place where people don’t gather together in public, where each person makes decisions for their own family and “ care nothing for one another.”įor Odysseus – and his audiences – these words mark the Cyclops and his people as inhuman.
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