As this paper was originally given as a lecture, I have retained something of the spoken tone of the original. The paper explores some of the ways in which Odysseus is transformed from a stereotypical Greek warrior and hero into a wiser, humbler and more complex and sophisticated man through his various adventures on his return journey from Troy to Ithaca. These adventures symbolically describe and recapitulate some of the central tenets of psychoanalytic theories of psychic change and growth from the contemporary Independent, Lacanian and post-Kleinian schools.