Many people will be going to see Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of the Odyssey.  No doubt you've watched the trailer, booked your tickets, and seen photos of the movie's stars in all their glittering finery.  Well, I'm going to pull my own Odysseus-inspired cheeky move and use the hype of the film to blog about a therapeutic technique called bibliotherapy using the story of the Odyssey... a Trojan horse, if you will, ahem.

Bibliotherapy is a therapeutic technique where we use poems and literature as an avenue to explore the deeper feelings related to our own experiences.  We use characters and symbolism from texts to communicate emotions that are otherwise difficult to capture.

The Odyssey is a perfect example of a text used in bibliotherapy.   Through Odysseus, we witness a story of a man lost at sea, battling against all odds (and gods) to return home to Ithaca and be reunited with his beloved wife and son.   It's a story of human endurance, loss, and hope.  Through him, we can drop anchor into the story and explore how our experiences relate to his.

As an audience, we can ask ourselves:  What is our Ithaca? What is the ultimate goal we are yearning to reach, the thing we will never lose hope in achieving?  We can also ask ourselves, what is getting in our way of getting to Ithaca?

Are we getting distracted by external forces, like the Sirens and the Lotus Eaters? Or is an oppressive force holding us hostage like Polyphemus or the Laestrygonians?  We can use the story to explore feelings of being lost and at the mercy of powerful external forces.  Or what it's like to feel stuck and unable to move forward.

Although the Odyssey is 2500+ years old and set in mythical lands filled with gods and monsters, it is a deeply human story that still teaches us lessons about ourselves today.