Our Own Ithaca by Anastasia Gkonti

Christopher Nolan’s new film, The Odyssey, has received a lot of criticism.

But no matter what people say about it, for me it did something important. It reactivated my personal connection to this story — the story of Odysseus returning home.

This myth has always resonated with me. I remember studying Homer’s Odyssey at school, and it was always my favorite. Over the years, I grew increasingly attached to the story. And it’s only now that I understand a bit more deeply why.

As a kid, you read it as an exciting tale. Huge monsters, wild adventures, a land full of beauty where you can forget life’s difficulties.

Looking back at my life now, I can see all the physical journeys I’ve made, the different places I’ve lived, and how each one represents, for me, part of one great voyage. Ups and downs. Hardships. The struggle of being a foreigner. But also its beauty — the different cultures and civilizations, the companionship, the wonderful people I’ve met, some of whom you might lose along the way as Oddyseus lost his conmrades.

But now, in my forties, I realize this story carries a different meaning too. This time, it’s about the inner journey. Having studied psychology and worked as a psychological counsellor, I see and understand this story from a very different perspective.

I’m endlessly fascinated by its timelessness — by how often it comes up in my practice room. Everyone brings their own meaning to it. Some interpretations are fairly common, others deeply personal. But above all, it’s a universal story. It speaks to our inner understanding, to what Carl Jung called individuation: the journey home to our true self.

Sometimes we feel we’re losing that core — who we are, what we need, what brings us joy and peace, what matters to us, what our contribution to this world might be.

At other times, we feel much closer to it. It’s never an easy road. It’s always full of ups and downs — crises, breakdowns, relational struggles, pain, sorrow, grief. Every time we edge nearer, we may also confront different demons, our shadow, as Jung called it: our blind spots and the parts of ourselves we’ve suppressed, whether painful or beautiful.

Ultimately, that’s our Ithaca. It’s the moment we meet our soul — the moment we integrate our anima and animus, the feminine and masculine parts of the self. For me, Penelope was Odysseus’s anima. And once this integration happens, we find our truth. We find our purpose. We find our soul, whole. We never lose Ithaca again; we know it lives always in our heart.

This doesn’t mean perfection. It isn’t about reaching some flawless state. It’s about this connection. And once we have it, we can face life’s struggles and pain from a more integrated place — a whole-self perspective.

Working in Berlin with clients, I feel this journey very concretely. It’s a city where people from so many different backgrounds land, some of them finding a piece of home here, some of them getting lost in it, too. In some ways, Berlin can feel like Circe’s island — a place where people can turn into pigs, just consuming, eating, numbing, not really thinking, not really being conscious. Not caring if we hurt ourselves or others. Some get lost for a while in substances, in sex, in consuming, and I’ve come to see that as part of the process too, not separate from it. But it’s also a place where people face their demons, where they heal, where they grow, where they cry, grieve, dance in order to find their home, their unique self, away from what others, in their place of origin expected from them. Everything seems to happen at once here. And so many of them are away from their home, from their roots — homesick, nostalgic, carrying that longing with them into the room.

I think that’s the particularity of working here. It’s almost like we meet through this shared archetype, the traveler seeking their home, their destination. And I see the work I do with my clients as a journey in the same shape — it starts, it moves through a middle of facing demons and pain, and slowly, there are moments of coming closer to the true self, of integrating the parts that were rejected, not seen, not validated.

But eventually, we cannot escape our demons, our pain and grief, during this process, during this journey. We may experience periods or moments of numbness, when we taste the Lotus, but somehow at some point the pain resurfaces asking for our attention and care and paradoxically this same pain becomes the road to our Ithaca.

Sources:

Jung, C. G. (1953). Psychology and Alchemy (or The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious for anima/animus and shadow)

Winnicott, D. W. (1960). “Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self,” in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment