Homer described trauma, grief, and recovery centuries before psychiatry had words for any of them
SOURCE: Jo Marchant, Nature, July 23, 2026
FUNDING: Independent
Background
Long before psychiatry existed as a field, storytellers were already describing the mind under strain. This article from Nature reviews what Homer’s 3,000 year old epic reveals about the ancient understanding of medicine, and I’ve expanded further on the psychiatric details.
PTSD
Homer’s characters show grief, dissociation, and what reads like traumatic stress, all tied to the loss and violence of war. After fighting for ten years in the Trojan war, Odysseus recalls the events through flashbacks. In the book, he spends seven years in grief, weeping whenever Troy is mentioned:
Every day he sat on the rocks,
breaking his heart with tears and groans
At night, he ruminates, unable to sleep:
He lay awake, turning many things over in his heart.
In the day he is on alert, anticipating threat and constantly planning.
He has moral injury over compromises he made in the wary, such as neglecting to bury the dead and breaking Zeus’s law of hospitality by invading with a Trojan horse. And most of all, survivor’s guilt:
All my companions perished… I alone escaped.
Science, Navigation, and Botanical Medicine
The poem describes a plant that wipes away memory on the island of the lotus eaters. Another herb protects Odysseus from poison.
On Circe’s island, Hermes gives Odysseus Moly as an antidote to Circe’s spell that turned his men into pigs. No one knows what Moly is, but scholars think it may have been inspired by snowdrop, an herb that contains the modern medicine galantamine, which inhibits acetylcholinesterase. Galantamine is used to treat dementia, and also prevents toxicity from nerve gases and pesticides.
Wound descriptions match what early Greek physicians would have observed firsthand. Even the sailing scenes align with actual Mediterranean weather and star patterns.
What About the Film?
Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation shifts the focus from magic and mythology to psychology, but the core psychological features are present in the original text.
In the film, it is Odysseus who takes the memory-erasing lotus, rather than his crew. Instead of a lotus-eating islant, the plant is given to him by Calpsyo to ease his mental pain so that he can recover physically. The poem does tell the story of trauma through flashbacks, but the hero never forgets.
Botanicals have medical, rather than magical, properties in the film.
By downplaying the role of the Gods, Nolan places more responsibility on humans, and hence more moral injury. In the end, the film is more a story about how a veteran reintegrates into family and society rather than a hero who reconciles with the gods. It’s a fitting follow-up to his earlier film of conscience and war, Oppenheimer.
Learn More
- The Odyssey took place 3,000 years ago, but medicines in use today have deeper roots. 12,000 years ago, the Persians began using saffron to treat depression, a property confirmed only recently in large, randomized trials. Around the same time, Viking soldiers took Rhodiola rosea for strength and stamina, a property confirmed in modern research.
- Our Carlat podcast series on PTSD delves deep into diagnosis and treatment. The first episode covers the history and culture, from the Odyssey to Paul Hardcastle’s Nineteen to 9/11 and Iraq..
—Chris Aiken, MD
Director, Psych Partners
Editor in Chief, Carlat Psychiatry Report
