Being Achilles’ Heir: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes

Abstract:This article offers a psychoanalytical reading of Neoptolemus’s evolution on stage in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. The analysis stems from Italian psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati’s definition of inheritance as a movement of reclamation, which entails the heir’s active choice in approaching his father’s example. In the end of the play, Neoptolemus emerges as a good heir, because he neither dismissed Achilles’ values entirely (as Odysseus demanded in the prologue), nor did he re-enact his father’s behavior uncritically, as Philoctetes was expecting. Neoptolemus deliberately chooses to reclaim his Achillean ethos, without overlooking the importance of other forces at work (friendship and piety).