Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'wrapping' functions as a richly layered symbol operating simultaneously on somatic, cosmological, and initiatory registers. R. B. Onians provides the most sustained scholarly excavation, demonstrating that in archaic Greek thought the wrapping — whether a narrow band, a wide cloak, or a death-shroud — served as the concrete, quasi-material vehicle through which fate, disease, altered states of consciousness, and passage across ontological thresholds were visualized and enacted. For Onians, wrapping is never merely metaphorical: it names a covering that actively confers or transforms the state of the one enveloped, linking funerary practice, initiatory ceremony, and the binding power of divine decree. Murray Stein's clinical dream material extends this logic into depth-psychological encounter: the hieratic figure who wraps a dreamer in Egyptian linen signals precisely the transformative investiture Onians traces to Homeric and mystery-religion contexts. In the somatic-trauma tradition, Ogden treats the wrapping gesture — arms around the body — as a bottom-up self-regulatory resource that retrieves internalized attachment experience. DBT literature similarly instrumentalizes wrapping as a sensory self-soothing act. The spectrum across these voices — from archaic cosmology to clinical technique — reveals a consistent structural logic: wrapping demarcates a threshold, encloses what must be transformed, and mediates between inner state and outer world.
In the library
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a new state, a new fate received, embodied in a band or wrapping fastened around or covering the recipient. In fact in the classical period the person married and the person initiated alike received such a band or wrapping
Onians argues that in Greek initiatory and marital rites the wrapping is the concrete, material form in which a new fate is conferred upon the recipient, making it the literal embodiment of ontological change.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
the wide band or cloak, wrapping, to more pervasive states of body or mind. When a man's hands are stricken with weakness, or his limbs are paralysed, they are 'bound' by a god
Onians establishes that in Homeric thought the wide wrapping corresponds to pervasive psychosomatic states — binding, constraint, and transformation of consciousness — enacted by divine agency.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
The equation of the wrapping of fate given by the gods with that with which men wrapped the dea
Onians demonstrates a structural equation between the divine bestowal of fate as wrapping and the funerary practice of wrapping the dead, unifying cosmological and mortuary dimensions of the term.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
The conceiving of the darkness or cloud about one's head at death as a substantial covering or wrapping will explain the enveloping head-covering, the peculiar attribute of the Greek death-god
Onians traces the death-cloud experienced at the moment of dying as a tangible wrapping that explains the mythological head-covering of Hades, linking phenomenology of dying to divine iconography.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
Here the picture is clearly of something first hanging or hung over a man and then enveloping him, the last line recalling Homer's 'TEAOS QAVOTOIO covering his eyes and nostrils'.
Onians reads Greek poetic imagery of old age and death as successive stages of wrapping that begin by hanging over a person and culminate in total envelopment, materializing fate as a covering substance.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
he brings out yards and yards of Egyptian linen and wraps me from head to
In a clinical dream recounted by Murray Stein, the wrapping in Egyptian linen by an ancient initiatory figure enacts psychic transformation, directly instantiating the Onianic connection between wrapping and the conferral of a new self-state.
Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting
wrapping of the dead, 428-9; association of Phersu with death, 429 n. 1
The general index of Onians confirms the systematic place of wrapping within his argument, cross-referencing Etruscan funerary practice and the death-deity's attributes as a coherent cultural complex.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Ann discovered a habit of hugging herself by wrapping her arms gently around her body and squeezing. Her anxiety calmed down, and she felt warmed and comforted when she hugged herself.
Ogden demonstrates that the somatic act of self-wrapping functions as a retrievable bottom-up resource that regulates anxiety by reactivating internalized attachment experience.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
wrapping themselves in a cozy blanket to create a sense of comfort
DBT literature mobilizes wrapping instrumentally as a sensory self-soothing technique within distress-tolerance skill training, reducing it to a behavioral comfort strategy.
Scott, Anthony, DBT Skills Training Manual: Practical Workbook for Therapists, 2021supporting
beauty: as a wreath or crown, 402, 461 n. 8; poured about a person, 464 n. 3
An index entry gestures toward the related motif of beauty as something poured or placed around a person, suggesting wrapping as an aesthetic and bestowing gesture beyond fate and death.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988aside