CriticaLink | Plato: Phaedrus | Questions

  1. How does Socrates's dialectical technique compare to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic technique? Can we say that our knowledge of the true Forms is unconscious, in the sense that Freud understands?
  2. Plato's representation of the human soul is strikingly similar in form to Sigmund Freud's model of the pscyhe--the charitoteer could be aligned with the ego, the bad horse with the id, and the good horse with the superego. What elements of these two models of the soul are different? What fundamental assumptions about reality (what ontological assumptions) lie behind each of them?
  3. In section 255 D of the Phaedrus, Socrates describes the beloved boy's response to the lover's attentions, using the metaphor of a mirror to indicate that the boy sees himself reflected in the desire of the lover. How does this "reflection" correspond to Jacques Lacan's theory of the "mirror stage"?

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