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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Homeric Subjects: Psychoanalysis and the Iliad Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9sb197nq Author McCrary, William Witherspoon Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Homeric Subjects: Psychoanalysis and the Iliad A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Classics by William Witherspoon McCrary 2017 © Copyright by William Witherspoon McCrary 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Homeric Subjects: Psychoanalysis and the Iliad by William Witherspoon McCrary Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Brent Harmon Vine, Chair The Homeric poems’ folk theories of the mental apparatus are primitive, the characters are not very introspective, and the narrators are not particularly concerned with depicting interiority. All of this should not, however, be taken for a lack of characterization or psychological insight on the part of the poet(s). As some scholars have recognized, interiority is not absent; it is implicit. This dissertation makes the implicit explicit. Drawing on four theories or schools of psychoanalysis (object relations, self psychology, attachment theory, and relational psychoanalysis), I show what beliefs, assumptions, and interpersonal templates Achilles and other Homeric characters use to interpret the world, construct their subjective experience, and guide their interactions with others. We see how Achilles’ characteristic ways of relating reflect his mental representations of self and other in interaction. The first two chapters show how the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad 1, and therefore the plot of the whole poem, grows out of their personalities. The first chapter explains Agamemnon’s refusal to ransom Chryseis, points out the subtle ways in which Achilles ii masochistically provokes Agamemnon, and traces Agamemnon’s shifting and contradictory defenses. In the second chapter, I analyze the quarrel proper. The heart of the chapter begins our discussion of narcissism and establishes Achilles’ relational manner and what it implies about his personality. The third chapter shows how Achilles prevents reconciliation with Agamemnon in book 1, introduces the enactment that Achilles repeatedly draws others into, compares his behavior and personality with Thetis’s, and considers his heroism in the context of masochism and narcissism. After first demonstrating that Achilles is narcissistic, the fourth chapter then uses self psychology, object relations theories, and relational psychoanalysis to explain the outcome of the embassy, Achilles’ enactment, and the origins of his narcissism. I take the characters apart and put them back together to show how they work. Just as an orthopedist might be able to visualize what each bone and muscle are doing as a person moves, we learn to discern what mental processes and representations of self and other are at work as the characters interact with one another. iii The dissertation of William Witherspoon McCrary is approved. David Blank Alex Purves Mario Telò Brent Harmon Vine, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Vita vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Antecedents 21 Chapter 2: Quarrel 76 Chapter 3: Withdrawal 151 Chapter 4: Embassy 210 Conclusion 308 References 316 v Acknowledgments Although I can offer them no geras commensurate with their deserts, I want my committee members, David Blank, Alex Purves, Mario Telò, and Brent Vine, to know that for their labors, unlike for Achilles’, there is no lack of charis. I would like to thank them all for humoring me and giving me the freedom to go where my interests led. I would like to thank David for his kindness in joining a project already underway, Alex for her patience and valuable feedback, and Mario for his enthusiasm for my project and for his great kindness, especially in seeing this project through to completion even after his move to Berkeley. Finally, I would like to give my special thanks to Brent, my chair, whose support, encouragement, and belief in the project helped get me through tough times and made this long, lonely, and trying process seem a little less long, a little less lonely, and a little less trying. vi VITA 2007 B.A., Classics, English Emory University Atlanta, Georgia 2008-2009 UCLA Wooden and Classics Fellowship University of California, Los Angeles 2009-2011 Teaching Assistant Department of Classics University of California, Los Angeles 2010 M.A., Classics University of California, Los Angeles 2011-2012 UCLA Wooden and Classics Fellowship University of California, Los Angeles 2012-2015 Teaching Assistant Department of Classics University of California, Los Angeles 2016 Visiting Lecturer Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles PRESENTATIONS McCrary, William. March 2012. "The Mimetic Effects of a Story-Pattern and its Formulas." Annual Meeting of the Classical Society of the Middle West and South. —. 2013. "Ovid's Orpheus and the Uses of Parody." Annual Meeting of the Classical Society of the Middle West and South. vii Introduction I. Theory This dissertation is an experiment. My goal was to use contemporary psychology to help me generate new readings of Homer. Since literary critics had long found Freud’s and Lacan’s ideas useful, I suspected that the vast discipline of psychology might have some other useful ideas to offer. After exploring various branches of psychology, I eventually realized that what I was looking for was a theory, and so I turned to psychoanalysis. I use four theories of psychoanalysis: self psychology, attachment theory, object relations theory, and, above all, relational psychoanalysis.1 Object relations theory is more a school than a theory. Major theorists in this tradition include Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, John Bowlby, and Otto Kernberg. Although Klein is frequently in the background of the dissertation and greatly influenced these other authors, she does not make many direct appearances. Fairbairn and Winnicott appear in the last chapter and Winnicott in the conclusion. Kernberg combines Klein’s, and to a lesser extent Fairbairn’s, object relations with Edith Jacobson’s and Margaret Mahler’s ego psychology.2 He has been a leading theorist of narcissism and borderline personality disorder since the 1960s and plays a large role in chapters 2 and 4. I will introduce these authors’ theories, as well as Heinz Kohut’s self psychology, as we come to need them in the course of the dissertation. 1 I was initially highly skeptical of psychoanalysis, and while I still think that more than a little skepticism is in order and I certainly do not accept everything that I read, I can usually find something of merit, and I have developed a deep appreciation for the whole tradition. Our skepticism should vary with the date and theory of the author and the extent to which he is describing clinical phenomena or engaging in metapsychology. 2 Kernberg 1976, Greenberg and Mitchell 1983, Mitchell and Black 1995. 1
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