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The psychiatric meaning of the Ulysses theme developed in my mind while I was treating a young male adolescent whose life history and transference in psychotherapy illustrate the subject matter: a son's reciprocal search for his estranged father to recomplete their trinity of relationships with his mother. The life of the patient's father is also a striking example of this theme—which he sublimated through an interest in James Joyce—who, in turn, had projected his own life in Ulysses— which is the modern counterpart of the Odyssey of Homer, who originated the theme. As if these were not enough, while I was contemplating this staggering series of similarities in psychiatry and literature, my own parents, whom I had not seen for many years, suddenly visited me from a distant land and this personal reunion made my perception of the theme more acute.
The first extant work of Western Classics—The Odyssey of Homer10 is ideologically and structurally divided into three parts. The first probes the relationship between Ulysses' (Odysseus') wife, Penelope, and their son Telemachus in the absence of Ulysses. As the muse of poetry announces the setting of the story, in the tenth year after the Trojan War or the twentieth year since his departure from his family and kingdom of Ithaca, Ulysses is still being detained by the nymph Calypso in her island, while Penelope has been besieged by suitors, believing he is dead and thwarting the succession of their twenty-year old son. The second part narrates separately the successful mutual search between the father and son; and the third describes the reunion of the three and other reunions.
At the very outset, the triangular predicament of Ulysses— Telemachus—Penelope is presented: The father is presumed