Traumatized Heroes? Achilles, Odysseus and the Retrospective Diagnosis of ‘Combat Trauma’

In recent decades, the clinical term “trauma” has been applied to historical societies in the belief that the modern techniques of diagnosis in clinical psychology are able to identify this pathology in the past. In the study of the ancient world it has been used to interpret the psychological experiences of ancient combatants, approaching episodes and passages in the literary sources such as epiphanies or the sufferings of characters in drama in a modern light. The notion, however, has been questioned as an anachronistic colonization of the past, an example of “retrospective diagnosis” that ignores the experiences, motivations and explanations provided by the ancient sources. Since “trauma” was first applied to the ancient world through the analysis of the characters of Achilles and Odysseus in the Homeric poems, a thorough study of their personalities in their literary context, respecting the internal consistency of the Homeric narratives, can provide an avenue to reconsider the notion of trauma and its usefulness in the analysis of historical societies.