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Abstract
Philosophical and literary perspectives are combined with psychoanalytic ones in an attempt to provide a comprehensive conceptualization of the theme of homecoming. The concepts of home and homecoming are presented as symbolic representations of fundamental psychical functions, and their vicissitudes as subjective manifestations of basic psychic organizations. The hypothesis is put forward that the ability, or lack thereof, to work through the process of mourning of a lost object colors the evolution and outcome of any reckoning with such a notion and what it stands for. Literary sources are used to supplement and explicate psychoanalytic understandings regarding how the concept of homecoming is being made use of, within unconscious dynamics observed in a number of analytic cases.
Notes
1Because the Romans had comparatively few personal names and passed them down from eldest son to eldest son, contemporary citizens of Rome often had the same names as their distant forebears, implying that contemporary events were a re-enactment of the achievements of the ancestors (Everitt, Citation2001, pp. 138–139).