ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud, during his final period, refers to the Symposium once again in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in relation to his theory of the union between Eros and the death drive, undermining the idea that the Symposium is merely a precursor of Christian asceticism. His references to Socrates give psychoanalyst a sense of a continuity between Socrates and the analyst. This chapter offers a valuable indication of the analyst's relation to death, which not only contradicts the idea that Freud was naturally pessimistic but also casts a rather different light on the question of poetic "melancholia". There is no formula that would establish any continuity between desire and the act or that would allow an examination of the motives for the act to precede the act itself. Therefore, an entirely new operation is required if we wish to grasp the subjective turn that has led an analy-sand to occupy the position of analyst.
