2008 AGIP Annual Lecture: The Odyssey

INTRODUCTIONbjp_1143 491..492

AGIP, the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy, has from itsinception in 1974 included in its training syllabus the subject ‘Fairy Tale’.Trainees choose a myth, legend or fairy story, and analyse it through thethree lenses of Freudian, Kleinian and Jungian theory.This exercise is in linewith AGIP’s tradition of breadth and inclusivity, in terms not only of therange of psychoanalytical theories taught, but in the attention paid to theoverarching metapsychologies of the theorists.

The ‘Fairy Tale’ work, which allows considerable freedom to trainees inthe way they choose to present it, produces strong and lasting understand-ings of aspects of theory and of the minds of the theorists. Still more pow-erfully, it evokes and illuminates the role of symbol, metaphor and dramathrough the characters and their interplay, the structure and unfolding of thestory itself, and through its deeper underlying meanings. The study turns outto be one not only of theoretical but of clinical illumination: transferenceand countertransference, emotional response to the other, nuances ofmeaning in communication, all are here.

These stories by their very endurance bear witness to their wide anduniversal meaning for humanity. And each trainee has inevitably chosen,wittingly or otherwise – and never with the fuller understanding that lateremerges – a story of deep personal significance for him or herself.

Fittingly, our Annual Lecture in 2008 centred on this theme. The chosenmyth was that of The Odyssey, that great quest for identity, kinship and truth– and, as Meg Harris Williams (2005) has it, of reunification with one’s Muse.The papers given by our two speakers, Jean White and Carol Leader, arepresented here. Jean White was invited as our guest speaker. Her paper iswritten from a contemporary Independent, Lacanian and post-Kleinian per-spective, the latter strand influenced by Bion’s radical new theories of mind.Carol Leader, an AGIP member, speaks from the Jungian perspective.

Each in their different way, then – and difference in interpretation alwaysemerges as a keynote of the work with these stories – our speakers richlyillustrate the ideas that inspired the AGIP tradition; ideas that, thoughinnovative in a psychoanalytic training, are scarcely new. To take as anexample just one earlier thinker on the subject, the third century eclecticphilosopher Ammonias Saccas taught:

dorothy hamilton is a longstanding Honorary Member and former Chair of AGIPand has played a leading role in the development of its training.

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the practice of interpreting all sacred legends and narratives, myths andmysteries, by a rule or principle of analogy and correspondence, so thatevents which were related as having occurred in the external world wereregarded as expressing operations and experiences of the human soul.

(Wilder 1869)

Dorothy Hamilton

References

Harris Williams, M. (2005) Conversations with internal objects: Family and narrativestructure in Homer’s Odyssey. In: The Vale of Soulmaking: The Post-KleinianModel of the Mind. London: Karnac 2005. [Earlier version (2003) British Journal ofPsychotherapy 20(2): 219–35.]

Wilder, A. (1869) The eclectic philosophy. In: New Platonism and Alchemy. Albany,NY: Weed, Parsons & Co. Reprinted in: Secret Doctrine Reference Series.Minneapolis, MN: Wizards Bookshelf, 1975.

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