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The psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist is a modern-day Menelaus whose successes and failures coincide with his efforts to confront Proteus, the unerring old man of the sea. Like Menelaus, the therapist is on his eternal journey (self-exploration), during which he is forever becoming lost or marooned (himself as pathological); and seeking to escape, alone or with the help of others-even as Menelaus needs Eidothea, daughter of mighty Proteus-(himself as analysand/supervisee). But, most significantly, he must learn “all the wizard wiles of that old man,” for within Proteus' transformations lies insight, the buried treasure, the Golden Fleece.
The therapist knows, both personally and in his work with patients, that there are moments when he (or the patients) experience insight simultaneously cognitively, emotionally, developmentally, dynamically, historically, and oedipally; but little is known about the etiology of these golden moments. Perhaps, if we reexamine Freud's “evenly hovering attention” as technique in the light of the Menelaus myth, we can better conceptualize a process which may well be vital to comprehending this analytical phenomenon. Although, as Roy Schafer suggests, reification has its own pitfalls, mythology may be employed fruitfully, if only to help us verbalize in personified imagery the interpersonal and intrapersonal phenomena that are difficult to conceptualize. The oedipal myth well illustrates the strength of such imagery. If we construe Homer's epic work as a metaphorical odyssey into the therapeutic process, then the encounter of Menelaus with Proteus-like Keats' Grecian Urn-may be seen as a verbal sculpture forever capturing in its personified imagery the “evenly hovering attention” process. The problem we wish to illuminate is: How do a patient and therapist reach that point where insight acquires reconstructive power?
Menelaus, marooned with his men on an island, hungry, and without wind to sail away from his imprisonment, comes to