Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles (TI, p. 77).

To set the stage, Karen Horney’s model of inner conflicts in a neurotic personality includes the three main strategies of moving towards people, moving away from people, and moving against people. These strategies are derived from early childhood experiences in which the child attempts to mitigate hopelessness and isolation in a world it perceives as potentially hostile (OIC, p. 41). 

Robert Moore’s ritual eldership framework consists of three main elements that the elder serves on behalf of the initiate, in order: The initiate Submitting to the initiatory process, the elder Containing the initiate and the initiation itself, and the initiate Enacting the fruits of the initiation through contained exercises and returning to the world a changed person (TAOI, pgs. 108-110).

In the story of the Iliad, Achilles is operating in a hostile external environment in which he is imbued with divinely sanctioned wrath, while simultaneously unable to control the ultimate ends to which it is used. The will of Zeus moves towards its end in this story, and Achilles’ wrath ultimately belongs to the father of Olympus (TI, p. 77). Surely, this is a recipe for neurotic conflict if there ever was one. Furthermore, Achilles has full knowledge of the ends to which his short life will take him: death at the walls of Troy. As his own mother attests: “O my son, my sorrow, why did I ever bear you? All I bore was doom… Doomed to a short life, you have so little time” (TI, p. 91). Achilles has but one way out of this divinely ordained death, away from home: immortalization through song; to have his identity put on the record through achieving glory, or kleos (TAGH, p. 39). Achieving this glory is the purpose of Achilles’ life. At the onset of the story, Agamemnon’s theft of his woman Briseis threatens to strip him of his own personal honor, and the greater glory of immortality. At once, both his personal honor as Achilles the man, and his immortalized glory as Achilles the hero, are at stake.

And who formed Achilles from boy to man, to handle this dilemma? Phoenix, a retainer of Achilles’ father, Peleus. In Book Nine, Phoenix tells Achilles and the assembled embassy that Peleus “dispatched me to teach you all these things, to make you a man of words and a man of action” (TI, p. 266). Phoenix raised Achilles since he was a newborn. For all intents and purposes, Phoenix initiated Achilles into the world of war and men. Yet, Phoenix’s own intentions for doing so fail Robert Moore’s requirements for successful containment and enactment. Cursed by his own father with childlessness, Phoenix himself admits “I made you my son, I tried, so someday you might fight disaster off my back” (TI, p. 268). I interpret this line to mean Phoenix expected Achilles to provide the material and physical security that an adult son gives to his aging father. Phoenix lacked the proper bearings to contain Achilles’ “craziness” – as Robert Moore would say (TAOI, p. 108) – because Phoenix needed Achilles to defend him from impending ruin, instead of needing him to be Achilles.

Before Book Nine ends, Achilles reckons with trading away his purpose and his personal honor as a warrior to return home. “If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies… true, but the life that’s left me will be long” (TI, p. 265). A man of action, Achilles had moved towards his purpose with zeal; now that the glory may no longer be there for him at the end of the road, he considers moving away from his purpose as Achilles entirely. 

What keeps Achilles at Troy, doomed to die, after all? The death of Patroclus, the man Achilles loved as his own life (TI, 470), which occurred after Achilles dispatched him in Achilles’ own battle armor to fight for the Achaeans as they were moments from being routed. Achilles sent Patroclus to battle in his place to protect both the waning potential for achieving kleos, and to preserve his personal glory by not returning to battle himself until Agamemnon himself begs for his return and returns Briseis. In this decision, Achilles attempts to move towards and away from his purpose simultaneously. He tells Patroclus not to push the Trojans back to Troy itself, not only because Apollo may intervene on their behalf, but also because Achilles’ glory will be diminished if he is not present in the event Patroclus does so (TI, 415). Like the man who raised him, Achilles sent Patroclus into the world to be something he was not to resolve an inner conflict over glory, as opposed to safety.

The death of Patroclus compels Achilles to stay at Troy and brings about resolution of his inner conflict between protecting his personal glory and protecting his attainment of kleos. Achilles tells his mother, Thetis that he will stay and return to battle to take revenge on Hector for killing “the dearest life I know” (TI, 471). This decision to stay unifies Achilles’ personal glory and kleos together, as he moves towards both through taking revenge on Hector. Undivided, Achilles would remain the Best of the Achaeans and achieve his kleos through death at the walls of Troy.