Psychoanalysis and the Homeric Epics

This book attempts a psychoanalytic interpretation of the Homeric epics and seeks to highlight the fundamental, initial psychological impulses of the Homeric man. Drawing on a wealth of Homeric passages, the author provides a psychoanalytic, linguistically and philosophically the psychological processes that begin with the primitive emotions of strife and rage, leading to the establishment of the concepts of space, time and the creativity of speech, thanks to man’s recognition of his own mortality. The narrative quality, creativity and tragedy of the Homeric epics are illuminated by K. Arvanitakis’s original discourse in a way that, whilst not reinventing the history of this phase in the emergence of the Greek and European spirit, he certainly offers an intriguing reconstruction of the context in which it took place. A book that certainly takes us beyond the stereotypes through which we have become accustomed to viewing the Homeric world.