Oedipus and Odysseus: A Clinical Exploration of Mythical Penelope’s Weaving as Illustrative of André Green’s Dead Mother Complex

At a difficult point in her analysis, my patient Julia invoked Penelope’s weaving and unweaving as she awaited her husband Odysseus’ return. In this paper I discuss how the repetition compulsion, encapsulated in the weaving and unweaving, illustrated Julia’s identification with a deadened, depressed mother, very like the Dead Mother that Green (Green, A. 1986. “The Dead Mother.” In On Private Madness. London: Karnac Books) describes. The evocation of Penelope highlights the painful dilemma of the child, whose love feels, according to Green, to be mortgaged to the mother’s depression. In the detail of the clinical situation, I consider the movement Julia could essay from the identification with the depressed, grief-stricken mother/Penelope in one session, to the recovery of a more benign parental couple, something more alive and libidinally connected, in a later session. I draw on Kohut’s idea of the “semi-circle of mental health” (Kohut, H. 1982. “Introspection, Empathy and the Semi Circle of Mental Health.” The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 63:395–407) described in the myth as Odysseus’ protective paternal presence in his son Telemachus’ early life. Following Freud’s lead of using Greek myths to articulate internal psychic dynamics, specifically his use of the myths of Narcissus and Oedipus, I draw on the story of Odysseus to elaborate the clinical manifestations of Julia’s psychic predicament.