A., Professor of Psychology at McGill University, has published a work primarily dealing with psychology that may be of interest to classicists. A.'s monograph appears in Brill's Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies series; it is less a reading of Homer than a demonstration that epic offers evidence for psychoanalytic theories about ego formation as an infant progresses from ‘the primordial unit of an undifferentiated, all-encompassing reality (fused mother-infant) to a state of differentiation and separateness in which the individual and autonomous “I” has broken off – both physically and psychologically’ (p. 99). Homer is fertile ground for such a study, A. claims: ‘In the Homeric Epics we are dealing with a world in a sort of pre-oedipal psychic flux – the terrain of great poetry – where character is found in statu nascendi’ (p. 1). As may be apparent, A. adopts some outdated theories of development of early Greek consciousness based, ultimately, on a Hegelian view of history, according to which a shift from epic to lyric to tragedy and philosophy corresponds to a development in consciousness; Homeric man in his ‘pre-oedipal’ stage is, according to A., best able to demonstrate ego formation frozen in an early form otherwise inaccessible to the analyst.Footnote ¹

A.'s emphasis on ego formation, based primarily on the work of Freud, M. Klein and, especially, D. Winnicott, unites the five chapters in this study.Footnote ² The rupture between infant and (m)other creates the psychic sense of time itself (pp. 23, 53, 72), and through the ‘oscillation between fusion with the mother and separateness’ (p. 24), the infant's sense of psychic time develops and forms a foundation for its developing identity (cf. pp. 23–4).Footnote ³ For A., Achilles achieves his fullest sense of identity – and ability to connect meaningfully with an Other – through his acceptance of his temporal existence; through acknowledging and accepting his death, he can let go of his anger and enter into a relationship with Priam (Chapter 1).

The emergence of the infant's identity is concomitant with (a) the appearance of an object separate and other from the infant's ‘I’; (b) a sense of loss of the primordial fused object; (c) the development of mechanisms for dealing with loss and aggression, such as reparation and symbolisation; and (d) the origin of language as a means of bridging the divide between the now-fractured ‘I’ and (m)other. The language that the child (no longer infans) finally produces aims to bridge the divide between the ‘I’ and the Other; the (m)other helps the child articulate feelings into words (p. 42). In language the child ‘reaches out to what is lost’ (p. 104; cf. p. 44), but never fully bridges the gap between self and Other (p. 104).

With this model, A. analyses Odysseus both among the Phaeacians (Chapter 2) and back home again (Chapter 3). Demodocus, the bard, plays the role of the (m)other for Odysseus’ shattered ‘I’ who cannot yet articulate his pain in speech (pp. 38–9); following Demodocus’ song, Odysseus is able to put his pain into words and establish his identity: ‘I am Odysseus, son of Laertes’ (Od. 9.19). A.'s interest in the scene ‘is to use the Phaeakian episode as a metaphor of what essentially goes on in the hic et nunc between analyst and analysand’ (p. 38); the analyst, then, is a kind of aoidos (cf. pp. 38–45).

In a different way, Athena helps Odysseus, now awakened upon an unrecognisable shore, (re)create his identity through coming to terms with the fractured nature of his experience (Chapter 3). Athena – another figure for the analyst – helps Odysseus complete a successful nostos: instead of an attempt to return to ‘the original state of fusion and un-differentiation’ (p. 60) as a kind of desire for death, Athena helps Odysseus return to the experience of primal separation as a source of energy: ‘The wish is not to eliminate the insufferable gap of separation, but, rather, … to re-live the excitement of the gap's creation, that confused feeling that what is being discovered is created’ (p. 60).

In Chapter 4, A. reads Odysseus’ nekyia as ‘an inner descent to the world of memory’ (p. 66). Key here is Odysseus’ encounter with his mother's shade; Anticlea bids Odysseus to ‘long for the light’ and to ‘tell’ everything he has seen to Penelope afterwards (Od. 11.223–4). Here the mother instructs the child to transform the pain of separation into meaning: sēma ‘tomb’ becomes sēma ‘sign’ in narrative (pp. 69–71). The nekyia provides Odysseus strength through memory, but allows those who are lost to him to be dead; his separation from his mother enables Odysseus to become an ‘I’ again and no longer an Outis ‘nobody’ (cf. pp. 38, 40).

In the final chapter A. considers the tragic form of Homeric epic as an analogue for our own human state of being ‘inwardly divided and faced with irresolvable dilemmas between conflicting realities and the incomprehensibility of death’ (p. 80), a state into which we are thrust at birth. Human tragedy, for A., is the reconciliation of time and loss. In the final books of the Iliad Achilles performs two ‘tragic acts’: he accepts his death, and allows his anger to transform into pity (pp. 93–4). A. concludes, ‘The hero's tragic act is an attempt to transcend fragmentation by accepting and embracing the Other … in its dual manifestation: the Other as death, and the Other as the Other subject’ (p. 96).

Perhaps a lack of philological training has led to a handful of errors and shortcomings: a general failure to look at specialised meaning of Homeric vocabulary, such as μῆνις (p. 8);Footnote ⁴ false claims of etymological connection, for example between ταϕών ‘bewildered’ (Il. 18.101–2: ταϕών < τέηθπα ‘be astonished’) and τάϕος ‘burial’ (< θάπτω, PIE *d^hemb^h - ‘dig, bury’) (pp. 17–18) or between ἵστος ‘warp, web’ (< ἵστημι) and ἱστορία ‘investigation’ (cf. ἵστωρ ‘investigator’ < οἶδα ‘have seen, know’) (p. 37); an erroneous etymology of Dionysus as ‘Di-onysos’, reflecting the god's association with fragmentation (p. 81); and a misidentification of Scholiast AT at Iliad 1.1 as ‘Eustathius’ (p. 85). Greek is printed without accents or breathing marks throughout, and transliteration, where it does appear, does not distinguish between vowel quantities. An occasional citation in the text (e.g. Laplanche [1987] at p. 41) is not to be found in the bibliography. The bibliography as a whole is a mix of works in psychology, cognitive studies and classical studies; the list of works on Homeric epic is scant and eclectic: A.'s greatest debts are to W. Schadewaldt, J. Griffin and E. Rohde.

A.'s book is worth reading for its use of works of psychoanalysis less known to classicists (Klein, Winnicott), and for the light his reading sheds on some familiar passages. However, his developmental model may turn some readers away.