ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 begins Part II of the book, which deals with specific authors and poems. The hero’s journey in Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid is examined through the lens of the self’s response to loss and trauma – in this case the loss of his colleagues and wife during the siege of Troy. Book VI describes the hero’s journey into the underworld, which is analogized to an analytic journey into the unconscious. Here the hero seeks to reunite with his father, who has died during his escape from Troy. The chapter examines this motif in light of contemporary thinking about the Oedipal relationship. A close reading of Book VI follows: the initiation into the underground, the meeting with lost souls, the encounter with Dido, the meeting with Deiphobus, who was dismembered at Troy by Helen. It culminates in his meeting with his father’s spirit, which compounds rather than ameliorates his sense of loss. The militarism celebrated at the end of Book VI is seen as a restorative fantasy of an omnipotent self. The chapter concludes with a case example of a male patient’s oedipal struggles with a father who led a double life as a closeted gay man.
