The Automedon Principle

Automedon is the figure from the Iliad who represents sustained non-heroic care: the attention that maintains what exists rather than conquering what does not.

In the context of the three wounds, Automedon is the healing principle: the capacity to hold attention steady through the crisis of attachment, the drift of dissolution, and the compulsion of identity-assertion.

Automedon does not eliminate the wounds; he tends them, keeps them from festering, and maintains the field of attention in a state of readiness for the discernment that will eventually know how to navigate among them.

Editorial Note