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"Interdisciplinary studies" are seldom satisfying becauseconventionally they tend to use a few insights simplified from one theoreticalmodel against some other model or pre-critical text, ie, poem, play, orwhatever. 1 ,p66
In his article, Walling purports that the behavior and traits of Achilles,Homer's magnificent poetic creation, represent diagnostic criteria forantisocial personality disorder. Instead of formulaic verse, we now read aboutAchilles in formulaic diagnosis. When I told a classicist friend about thistheory, he said, "Of course Achilles was antisocial--but he wasalso in the middle of a war!"
Walling makes the mistake of conducting a cross-cultural comparison betweenour culture and one that is far removed in time, geography, and culturalvalues and was based on war, warriors, male domination, shame, and honor. Theauthor also tries in a few pages to squeeze a young Greek warrior living some3,000 years ago, a man told he is fated to die soon, into the cookie cuttermold of "antisocial personality," a template arbitrarily defined,and periodically redefined, by predominantly 20th century Western Europeanwhite men. Walling gives us a snapshot of a man who, as almost all students ofHomer would agree (when they agree on little else), changes radically over thecourse of the 24 books.
This psychological analysis of Achilles is not the first. Three otheranalyses--those of Graham Zanker, Jonathan Shay, and W ThomasMacCary--shed different lights on the intricately composed...